Graduation
by Merlin Missy
Summary: Wesley must face his final test to become a Traveler, but what will it cost him?
1. Default Chapter

Graduation (1/2)  
A Star Trek: The Next Generation story by  
Merlin Missy

Copyright 1995, 2000

Typical disclaimer about Paramount owning everything up to and including the  
kitchen sink. Feel free to distribute, so long as my name and header are  
attached.

Chapter 1: Arrivals and Departures

Near the edge of the Galaxy, on a yet-nameless world circling an angry red sun,  
in the middle of a forest in late Autumn, just an hour past mid-day, a young man  
sat cross-legged on a hard, flat rock inspecting a bright stone. At first glance,  
his appearance was unremarkable: short dark hair, height slightly more than that  
of the average male of his species, but nothing out of the ordinary. Only his  
eyes set him apart from other members of his kind, and that only if one knew  
precisely how to look. If they were a little less wide and innocent than they  
once were, if there was not as much life in them as there might once have been,  
it could be chalked up to the added years. However, only one person in the  
universe knew just how many years that had been, and the price paid for each  
one.

Unbeknownst to him, he was silently being observed by that very person. His  
watcher was humanoid, about two meters tall, with two large fingers and a  
thumb to each hand. He had a slight protrusion at the bridge of his nose, while  
his head, which always gave the impression of being just slightly too heavy for  
his shoulders, was mostly bald save for a small greyish fringe that ended in an  
intricate knot at his nape.

As far as the youth was concerned, the alien could have been a child, or a being  
of Q's age. He had never told, and the Human had never asked. All the boy  
knew was that sixteen years before, by his own reckoning anyway, the Traveler  
had entered his life briefly and changed it forever. He had quietly arranged  
encouragement for the boy and had left upon a dream. Once, he had reappeared  
when things looked bleak, and had given him a glimpse of what was possible  
before slipping back into mystery. Time passed for the Human, and then the  
universe opened to him with the merest step sideways. The Traveler returned  
and left again, but he did not leave alone.

For the past eight years of his life, the youth had grown in wisdom and ability.  
No longer the cocksure, precocious child, he had been tempered with life  
experiences beyond those of most Humans. Together, they had been to places  
that were not locations but dreams, a world made of music, a universe of poetry.  
With time having no more meaning than starlight, they had tripped through the  
past of a dozen races, but only once had the Human glimpsed the future, and  
that was enough. Each trip took months of preparation and training, though of a  
far different sort than he had ever before known. The courses in the Traveler's  
academy were patience, meditation, and long study. The classroom was the  
universe. Now, the time had come for the final exam.

"Wesley..." he called. A distant bird cried from the woods.

Wesley turned to face his teacher. "It's time to go, isn't it?" The Traveler  
nodded. "You always get that look when it's time to move on. So where do we  
go next?"

"Not we. You." Seeing the youth's quizzical look, he continued. "There is  
something only you can do, something that must be done. You have reached  
the end of your lessons. This is the final test."

Wesley stood, not really surprised. His strange friend had mentioned recently  
that their association was coming to an end. Still, his stomach churned with  
nerves as he asked, "What is it?"

"There is..." He stopped, trying to collect his thoughts and memories. "If  
nothing else, you have learned that time is fluid. Paradox is usually not a  
problem when we Travel, because the timestream smooths out the small eddies  
we cause. Otherwise, we would destroy the universe the first time we moved  
from one time into another. Obviously, we do not." Wesley nodded.

"Sometimes, however, things are not as they seem. Paradox becomes an  
integral part of the picture, and certain things must be accomplished to make the  
timestream stable. My primary reason for existence, I would like to believe, is  
to channel these paradoxes into the timestream so they do not disturb the rest of  
it." He paused, trying to think back, to remember the right words ...

"But now there's a paradox you can't fix."

"Yes." Now he remembered. This is how it had gone, how it had been written.  
"But you can fix it, and you must. And I cannot tell you how, or why, or even  
the overwhelming importance in that the universe unfolds exactly as it has thus  
far." Now for the push sideways, to keep him from the center a little longer.  
"The time has come for you to repay your debt to me. The timestream must be  
kept whole. The price may be your life." He had to add that part; it was all part  
of the bargain struck long ago.

Wesley turned his attention back to the stone for a brief moment, turning it over  
in his hand. It was a heartstone, found only on Rigel VI. The stones were  
prized for their unique property of glowing at humanoid emotional states: red  
for fear, brown for sorrow, green for happiness, yellow for serenity, blue for  
love. Each stone was mined, polished and shaped individually, with no two  
ever alike. Robin had given it to him the last time they had seen one other, and  
he had sworn to her that they would marry the next time he saw her, no matter  
how long it took. He slipped the pink-tinged stone into his pocket with a sigh.

"What do I have to do?"

The Traveler smiled sadly. Of course the child had accepted the task. That too,  
was part of the timestream flowing onward, just as true and unalterable as his  
birth, or the long past death of his father, or the far-too-soon loss of the woman  
he loved. Some things could never be changed.

"You must trust me. First, we will test language skills. Ask the most important  
question in tlhlngan."

"nuqDaq'oH puchpa"e""

"In Bajoran High tongue."

He repeated the question in Bajoran, in Andorian third dialect, then in Ssruuk,  
and finally in Romulan. The Traveler nodded acknowledgement at each, then  
quizzed him on history, philosophy, scientific theory, literature, firing questions  
like phaser blasts. "Now, we will test your Changing."

"What form shall I take?"

"Lakanta first."

Wesley closed his eyes, and began his exercises. His breathing slowed as he  
slipped into deep relaxation. Then, his appearance shuddered, and he Changed.  
Where Wesley had been stood a different man, a small "rat's tail" of hair at his  
neck, and an older, rounder face. He was dressed in supple brown leather down  
to his moccasins. He opened his eyes and looked to the Traveler for approval.

"Good. Now Worf."

Again the relaxation, the Change, and a handsome Klingon male dressed in a  
cranberry red StarFleet uniform appeared in Lakanta's place, long hair pulled  
back in a grey-streaked ponytail. The Traveler nodded.

"Your stepfather."

The man standing before the Traveler was much older and slightly shorter than  
the last two, but with an air of dignity and grace about him. The ponytail was  
gone, replaced by a wreath of silvery-white hair. The uniform had become an  
ambassador's formal garb, scarlet and gold. In a perfect replica of the man's  
cultured voice, Wesley asked, "What do you think?"

The Traveler smiled. "I think you should not do that Change around your  
mother. It would... worry her."

The replica grinned.

"Now, I want you to become an adult male Vulcanoid, average Romulan  
citizen's attire."

The image paused a moment in thought, trying to remember his studies on  
Romulan culture. The shudder, the Change, and he was a Romulan of perhaps  
fifty or sixty years. He had not changed his own facial features much, just  
altered them to fit the Rihannsu image. His clothing had become a simple robe  
with somewhat large shoulders over slacks gathered at the bottoms, with a pair  
of nondescript boots.

"What is the most important rule of Travelling?"

"You can't go back to the same place twice, or else you'd meet yourself coming  
the other way." He paused. "Which means I only have one chance at this,  
whatever it is."

The Traveler nodded his approval. He turned away for a moment, to catch a  
glimpse of sunshine through the cool woods. When he turned back, his eyes  
were full of light. "When all is done, you will return here to this time. I will be  
waiting." He raised his hands in a gesture of farewell.

"But you haven't even told me When I'm going or what I'll be doing."

"You must discover that for yourself, Wesley. All I will tell you is that you will  
be prepared and that you are in the correct shape for the test." He placed his  
hands on the Romulan Wesley's shoulders, already knowing what the outcome  
would be. "May Fate lead you to your future."

He sent Wesley Travelling.

Alone, he sat on the large rock so recently vacated by his protege, and watched  
the distant sun through the primordial forest. After a while, he heard  
approaching footsteps.

VVVVV

Hecouldnotseeathinginsidethetimestreamhehatedgoinglikethis  
butthatwaswhatthetravelerwantedandhewasfallinghewasfalling.

VVVVV

The disorientation always came first. Wesley put a hand out to steady himself,  
found a wall of some sort, and clung there. After a few moments, enough time  
to take a deep breath and let the world revolve beneath his feet, he straightened  
and tried to get his bearings.

Walls rose high to either side of him, with a few stray words written here and  
there. He dug into his memories of written Rihannsu, but could not make any  
sense of what they said: "Cool Disco Dan," "Beware of the Duck in the Red  
Plaid Jacket." With a last shake, his head was clear, and he realized he was  
standing somewhat drunkenly in an alley. Somewhere Romulan. He read  
another, "Pink Mosh Bunnies Rule" and wished that he'd studied more written  
language. Mosh bunnies?

"You there!" came a voice from behind him. He turned slowly. A Romulan  
guard stood at the end of the alley, glaring at him. Had she seen?

"Yes?" he replied carefully, trying hard to think of a good excuse for being  
there and the words to say it. He came up blank.  
"You know the rules. There will be no loitering in the alleyways." Loitering?  
Good. She hadn't seen him Travel.

"I'm sorry, Centurion," he said, speaking slowly to get the words right, and  
hoping to hell he sounded stoned. "I seem to have lost my way." He stepped  
gingerly toward her. If he was lucky, she would just tell him to head home.

"Centurion?" She looked skeptically at him. "I think you should come with  
me." So much for being lucky.

He scratched his head and reread the graffiti, buying time to think. "Wait a  
minute. I know where I am now. I live two streets that way." He pointed  
behind him. He turned to walk down that way as fast as he could without  
seeming to hurry.

"Wait." Damn. "I think I'd better accompany you home. Just to make sure you  
arrive safely."

"There is no need for that. Honestly." The Traveler's teachings echoed through  
his mind: stay calm, always think before you act, and NEVER tell your real  
name.

"What's your name, Citizen?" The first phrase learned in any tongue. Also the  
worst. Have to pick one fast.

"Dalek." Suddenly, he was struck by inspiration. "What is your name?" He  
let his gaze wander over her. She was fairly pretty by his standards, and  
certainly by those of her own world.

"To you, I am 'Yes, Watch Commander,'" she said, obviously unimpressed.  
"And you are beginning to try my patience, Citizen Dalek." Nonetheless, she  
shifted to a less threatening posture. It had worked; she thought him drunk.  
That was fine by him.

"In that case, I will go." He turned back down the alley, hoping against hope  
that she wouldn't follow.

She followed.

"Show me where you live, Citizen."

He decided to try one last time. Thinking of two old and dear friends, he said:  
"You are the most beautiful woman in the universe." He felt something press  
against his back. A split second later, he realized it was a disruptor. So Will  
hadn't been kidding when he said that it wouldn't always work. Bummer.  
"If you do not start walking and show me where you live, you will be the most  
dead man in the universe."

"Yes, Watch Commander." He started walking, wondering where in hell he  
was going to go.

VVVVV

The garrison, if that's where he was, was as imposing on the inside as it was  
unnerving from the outside. Wesley looked around in wonder at the massive  
hive of bureaucracy humming all around him. Brown-clad workers scurried  
busily by, making just the slightest veerings in their direct paths through the  
chambers. The Watch Commander shoved him in the back.

"Stop gawking." She pushed him down a maze of hallways, and into a  
disturbingly tiny room, perhaps a meter and a half to a side, with one small light  
panel as decoration. The door slammed, leaving him alone with his thoughts.  
So much for charming her, or trying to fool her into thinking he actually lived  
around that block. It hadn't helped when he had chosen a door at random, only  
to have the real resident pick that time to come home.

He realized that he could be there for some time. He sat on the floor, and  
noticed the slightest upward force. He pushed down with his hand, and met  
with more resistance. So the cell had a force-shield, and was no doubt  
monitored somewhere. He was not really surprised; Worf had employed a  
similar device to keep prisoners from going through the floor or ceiling in the  
brig. Escape would be that much harder. He could still Travel out of the cell, if  
absolutely necessary, but then he would not be able to complete whatever he  
needed to do. Also, Traveling while Changed was usually not a great idea,  
unless of course one enjoyed migraines that lasted over a week. The jump  
there had been controlled by the Traveler. For his return, he would need to find  
a place where he could be unseen, or there would be far more questions left  
behind than was healthy for the continued good of the timestream. But how  
would he answer the questions that were sure to come now?

The door opened suddenly. A large, unsmiling guard pointed a disruptor at  
him. In his head, Wesley dubbed him Chuckles almost immediately. "You,  
come with me."

Wesley didn't argue.

Another maze, glimpses here and there of hurried Romulans, and he was  
brought into another room much like the one he had just left, this one equipped  
with a desk, two chairs, and an official of some sort reading a data padd. The  
official looked up at him, gestured towards the remaining seat, and continued  
reading the padd. After some time, he glanced up, and seemed surprised to see  
Wesley still there.

"Name?"

"Dalek."

"Occupation?"

"Traveling musician." The Traveler always seemed to have an appropriate  
persona on hand, and the wandering minstrel motif was usually the safest and  
most popular answer. "Would you like to hear a song?" He took a deep breath  
in preparation to sing as loudly and off-key as possible.

"No." Also the usual response. "It seems we have no record of you here in  
Kalind." Kalind? "Perhaps you could enlighten me as to where you come from,  
Dalek."

"That would be because I just arrived here this morning from Lin'Ank Rumm,  
as I tried to tell that Watch Commander on the way here. Are you sure you  
don't want to hear a song?" He took another deep breath.

"Quite sure." Good. On one trip, they had managed to get away with being  
itinerant singers for months after only singing once. They had been paid quite  
handsomely to never attempt it again. "We asked the Watch Commander, and  
she told us about your claims. Now, wouldn't you know that no one in Lin'Ank  
Rumm has ever heard of a traveling musician named Dalek?"

"I play to a very select audience."

"You play to no audience at all. You do not exist in our files anywhere." The  
official looked directly at him for the first time. "If you would like to exist, you  
will cooperate in our questioning. Do you understand?" Wesley nodded.

"Name?"

"Dalek."

The official, whose name he never did learn, looked over the top of his padd to  
the guard standing quietly behind Wesley's chair. Out of the corner of his eye,  
Wesley saw him move  
nanoseconds before he felt the blow. His ears rang a nice tune; he tried to hum  
it but failed.

"Name?" It was going to be a long day.

"Dalek."

VVVVV

Hours later (days?), Wesley returned to "his" cell, although it could have been  
another for all he could tell or cared, and collapsed on the floor. They thought  
he was a spy. They thought he was an imposter of someone who didn't even  
exist. They hadn't taken a blood test yet, or a physical scan. He didn't know  
how he could possibly fool either right now. He could still Travel. He had kept  
that in his mind during the interrogation. If he had to, he could Travel. The  
thought had given him strength somehow, the way a secret could.

He felt a cut across his cheek, and drew back green-flecked fingers. The  
illusion was good, but not good enough. He would have to think of something  
soon. The bleeding wasn't bad, and stopped after a minute. By then he was  
sound asleep.

VVVVV

Autumn again. The sky was grey-tinged, and the sunlight had that special  
quality of lateness unique to the closing of the year on every world. The breeze  
brushed against his face, and smelled of coming snows.

He looked down to see himself in a loose, white linen shirt with splayed sleeves  
and a short jacket. Robin was glorious beside him, in a long, flowing burgundy  
dress gathered at the waist, with the slightest dip in the laced, tight bodice. A  
small wreath of late flowers held long, dark hair out of her oval face.

His mother was to his right, dressed in a similarly  
breathtaking gown in the deepest shade of royal blue he'd ever seen, the waist  
more than just a shade too tight. Seated next to his mother, he saw his  
stepfather in an outfit much like his own, with a midnight-blue cloak wrapped  
around both of them.

Another Human male was to Robin's left, perhaps fifty or sixty years old, with  
dark hair turning silver, and a strange smile. He knew without conscious  
thought that it was the Traveler, who had brought them all to this strange place.  
The eyes gave it away.

Wesley looked around the crowded round theatre. Noisy people sat in the  
balconies and stood near the front stage. A trough went through the standing  
crowd, almost overflowing with waste and noxious debris. The average  
audience member seemed to have too few teeth, and not one of them appeared  
to have bathed in at least a month. In that respect, the party of five seemed to  
stand out. However, few people seemed to notice, as though being unusual was  
normal for the place.

On the stage, two men began to converse. After a few minutes, the audience  
quieted enough for Wesley to hear them:

"The Twelvemonths' time, a brief eternity,

Has lately passed as 'twere some solstice eve,

Made sacred by the vows we shall exchange.

How fares the gentle Kate?"

"I'sooth, she speaks

Of nothing further than our coming feast

To Hymen's glory ... "

Wesley glanced to his mother and Jean-Luc. Both were enraptured by the  
sounds and sights of a play which had been lost for nearly eight hundred years.  
"Love's Labours Won" had only shown a dozen times, perhaps two, before it  
had passed out of history with its author. But history was the stock in trade of  
the Traveler.

The wedding gift he had chosen for his mother, the one thing he knew that  
would entrance his stepfather, a chance to spend time with them and the woman  
he loved, all combined into a few hours' trip into the end of Earth's sixteenth  
century.

He took Robin's hand, and held it as she squeezed, a warm smile on her lips at  
him and at the obviously happy couple beside him. He looked over to the  
Traveler, and a shudder passed through to his sleeping body. The Human male  
with the alien eyes was not watching the play at all, but instead seemed intent  
on observing the young woman beside him. His voice echoed into the dream, a  
half-memory of times to come.

The time has come for you to repay your debt to me.

He owed the Traveler for the gift, for the long-dead play, for the look of joy on  
the faces of the three most important people in his universe. This was the debt  
he had to pay in the present, of which he was slowly becoming aware again. He  
fought against the return of consciousness, clinging to Robin's hand as a lifeline  
to this wonderful dream-world. Still he watched with a kind of detached awe,  
as he realized for the first time that the Traveler's guise resembled what his  
father might have looked like, only older and sadder. In his father's voice, the  
Traveler's words whispered.

The timestream must be kept whole. The price may be your life.

Unable to move or speak, he watched as the Traveler took Robin's other hand  
and gently pressed it to his lips.

The dream died suddenly, and Wesley found himself trembling on the floor of  
the cell. He knew the Traveler could do things beyond his own comprehension,  
but could he control even his dreams? If so, he had just given a good reminder  
as to why Wes could not leave. If not, if the last part had just been a result of  
his nervousness combined with the interrogation, then he really needed to rest  
his imagination. The Traveler and Robin? Carefully, he felt the comfort of the  
heartstone in his pocket.

"Law 103: A couple of lightyears can't keep good friends apart. Or real years,  
either." He sat up, in preparation to meet whatever would come next.

VVVVV

The door opened. The guard who had helped in his questioning the day before  
again gestured with his disrupter. Wesley looked at Chuckles, looked at the  
disruptor, and shrugged. This was getting old. Fast.

They walked in silence through the maze, Wes beginning to wonder idly if he  
would get a piece of cheese at the end. The thought made his stomach gurgle,  
as he realized he had not eaten since the previous day's lunch. To ignore the  
increasing noise level from his insides, Wes began to hum a snatch of song he'd  
heard the last time he'd Traveled into Earth's past, just two weeks previous.

Chuckles swatted him. Obviously a music critic.

Wes found himself led back to the nameless bureaucrat's office again. The  
Romulan stared at him across the desk, and did not invite him to sit.

"You do not exist, Citizen Dalek." He let the full  
implication settle in before he continued. "There are no records of you  
anywhere. No one remembers you. You have no home, no friends, no family,  
nothing." The ironic truth of his own words did not reach the administrator,  
however. Wesley already knew he had no one. He was not even precisely sure  
as to what century it was. He almost laughed at the absurdity of it all, then  
remembered Chuckles at his back.

"Under normal circumstances, you would be questioned until you told us what  
we need to know." He gestured meaningfully at the guard. "The only official  
charges we have against you for now are vagrancy, public intoxication, and  
attempted robbery." Wes looked at him questioningly. "Your attempt to  
convince the Watch Commander that another citizen's house was yours  
constitutes trying to rob him of his name," he explained. "However, these are  
hardly capital offenses. Also, our resources are somewhat limited. Therefore,  
not only should we not hold you, we could not keep you here longer than  
absolutely necessary anyway."

"So you are going to let me go?" Wes could not believe his good fortune.

"Go?" The Romulan looked puzzled, then understanding set in. "Ah, yes."  
Wesley smiled in relief. This nightmare could end soon, and he could find out  
what the Traveler had wanted him to do. Already, he was looking forward to his  
tour of Romulus.

"The colony will be glad to have another pair of hands."

"Colony?" His imagined wanderings around the shores of the Apnex Sea  
ended abruptly. What was he talking about?

"In the Carraya System. It's rather new, rumored to be a somewhat wet place,  
but if you don't mind needle-snakes or Klingons, you'll fit in just fine." He  
typed something into a padd, and handed it to Chuckles. "See that the prisoner  
is put on the transport." He smiled thinly at Wes. "You can sing for them in  
your spare time."

Klingons? Needle-snakes? The Carraya System? It all sounded familiar, like  
something he should know from an old nursery rhyme. As Chuckles escorted  
him out, he began to think longingly of home.

Chapter 2: Fish and Paint Chips

The docking bay was enormous. He had seen a dozen  
shipyards, had walked the passageways of starbases without number, but  
nothing had prepared him for this. It covered at least one hundred square  
kilometers at the ground, and stretched skyward into darkness. Romulans in  
workers' garb hurried through the bay, some carrying tools looking vaguely  
analogous to Federation standard, some holding devices whose purpose he  
would not even speculate. Considering the tiny cell in which he had spent the  
night, and the small ground-car in which he had been brought, this place was  
nearly too large to comprehend.

Chuckles, who seemed to be his eternal shadow, led him to the ship. It was  
surprisingly beautiful; the graceful lines flowed down the sides of its long hull,  
which split into two airy wings, and the whole thing was the palest shade of  
eggshell blue. Had first contact been with such a vessel, he thought, things just  
might have gone differently between the Federation and the Romulans.

Then, quieter than moonlight, the ship powered up and lifted gently off the pad  
as Wes watched, unbreathing. The delicate nose pointed towards the sky and  
soared into darkness. Wesley then saw the ship that had been parked behind it.  
Medium-sized, squat, looking somewhat battle-scarred and weary, it sat looking  
for all the world as though it would sigh heavily at any time.

"Move it, prisoner. They're waiting for you."

Wes stepped aboard the tired vessel, then tried to turn for one last glance at the  
gargantuan bay. Surely the entire Romulan fleet was launched from this place!  
His view, however, was blocked by Chuckles' looming form. The guard handed  
a padd to a passing crewmember.

"This is 'Dalek.' Be sure to afford him your best  
hospitality."

"Oh, we certainly will," she said, squinting at his uniform, "Captain Jarit."  
Jarit? So Chuckles did have a name after all. Wes watched him leave with  
no sense of nostalgia whatsoever.

"Come with me." The crewmember led him to a compartment in the back  
with almost the same dimensions as his cell. He wondered if they had been  
designed by the same architect, and whether this person had been summarily  
shot. With a sinking feeling, he saw that he had four bunkmates: two men, two  
women, all Romulan, none friendly.

"Wake up, slime. This is Dalek. He'll be joining us for our little trip." She  
turned to Wes. "Enjoy your stay." She slammed the door behind her; he heard  
the hum of the sealing mechanism being activated.

He glanced around the compartment and tried to smile.

"Anybody know where we're going?" He was met with cold stares by three of  
his companions.

"The place beyond the stars where all journeys end." The woman looked at him  
once, her eyes strange and deep, then returned to her studious examination of a  
crack in the wall's paint.  
"Ignore her," said one of the men, the more muscular of the two, who was  
probably early into his first century if Wes was any judge of Romulan ages.  
"She's mad." He offered a small tight smile that had little warmth to it. "I'm  
Trehan." He pointed to the others. "That's Josolar." The other, younger man  
nodded. His appearance was that of the idealized Romulan citizen: short black  
hair, dark brown eyes, skin the most perfect shade of olive, thin but powerful  
frame, possibly around sixty or seventy. "That's Kriana." He indicated the  
woman sitting quietly on one of the bunks, a long coil of hair pulled back from  
her face. Wesley thought she was probably between the men in physical years,  
but somehow much older in another way. There was a familiar quality to her,  
of terrycloth and steel. "And that's..."

"T'Riest, retainer of the House of Skone." Again she granted the soul-piercing  
stare for him, then back to the peeling paint. The tiniest flake floated down, and  
she laughed as though it had been the most impressive feat of magic ever  
performed.

"Her name on the padd was Arrhat, but she keeps changing it. For all we know,  
she might be named T'Riest."

Wes sat down at the edge of one of the two bunks, noting that the arrangements  
would be a problem come sleep-time. "I'm Dalek, traveling musician and poet.  
Would you like to hear a song?"

"No," said the three of them in unison. Arrhat giggled at the wall again. Wes  
shivered slightly. Knowing better, but feeling very alone, he tried once more to  
make conversation and figure out just where and When he was.

"So why are you all here? I was taken for vagrancy. They couldn't find my  
records."

At first, no one spoke. Wes mentally kicked himself for whatever faux pas he  
had committed this time. Then, the smaller man, Josolar, began.

"I was a doctor. I had ... the wrong opinion in a discussion. Unfortunately, a  
member of the Tal Shiar was within hearing distance. I'm lucky to be on this  
vessel." Wesley noticed newly-healing scars along his arms and across his  
hands, and swallowed deeply. "My daughter is still on Romulus, in my  
mother's care. Even if I did have objections to being here, it would not matter.  
I will not give the Tal Shiar any reason to harm her."

"I worked in the shipyards," said Trehan. In fact, I helped build this  
monstrosity. Never thought I'd actually ride in it. Last week, I was in a tavern,  
having an ale with some friends. This other guy in the room started acting  
uncivilized, making suggestions about one of the women I was with. I warned  
him once, but when he kept on, I decked him. Started a fight." Trehan smiled  
at the memory. "Turns out he was a Subcommander aboard the _Taris_."

"Did you win?"

"Don't be stupid. If I had, do you think they would have let me live? So  
instead, I'm on the transport to Hell. Almost had him, though. Makes you  
wonder what kind of people we have in the military these days, you know?"

Wes just nodded, then turned to the woman Kriana. "And you?"

She did not speak at first, and Wes thought that maybe she just had not heard  
him. She gazed at Arrhat for a long moment, but the other woman simply  
continued watching the paint with  
fascination. When she finally spoke, she had a soft exotic accent, but her voice  
was firm, and her tone unyielding.

"I was chief assistant to Senator Turin, since before he ever held a council seat  
in our home province." Both the men perked up at this; obviously they had  
heard of the man, but Wes remained clueless. "We both wanted the position,  
but he had more people with him, although not enough to win. I withdrew from  
the election, and influenced my own supporters to follow him. Together, we  
managed to overcome the opposition easily. After that, I was his right hand and  
closest friend, there for every decision, every vote, lending him support on the  
one condition that he listen to my suggestions. I know for a fact that he would  
not have been made Senator if it had not been for me.

"Three weeks ago, he decided that our association should take a more ...  
intimate direction. I told him that I had no interest in such a relationship with  
him, that I preferred him as my friend and colleague. He ... " She paused. A  
look of deep anger passed over her face. "The Senator is a man who does not  
accept refusal."

For a reason he didn't want to know, he found that he could not meet her eyes.

"Afterwards, I contacted the authorities, some of whom I had considered my  
friends. They chose to avoid a 'public defamation of character' for the Senator.  
I was told that what had transpired was of my own doing, that I had no doubt  
encouraged him, and that I should not press the matter further. I attempted to  
inform friends of mine in the Senate, and for my trouble, I was seized at my  
home two days ago." She turned to Trehan, eyes blazing with hurt. "You call  
the place we're going Hell. You may be right; I certainly do not want to spend  
the rest of my life in some backwater prison camp with clam-heads. But at least  
none of my 'friends' will be there."

The group soon descended into silence. Wesley found his gaze drawn over and  
again to Arrhat who, for some reason known only to her, was now trying to  
catch her own shadow.

"We don't know why she's here," explained Trehan after a while. "Maybe the  
hospitals were full, maybe they broke her mind during an interrogation. She  
hasn't said." Arrhat seemed to catch hold of something in the air. She held it  
against her ear, nodding occasionally as though she were listening to a tiny  
voice. She turned her dark eyes to Wes again.

"The Arrhat lady was a thief; Jacky wants a cicatrin leaf." She opened her  
hands and let whatever it was loose, seeming to watch it fly off. He saw  
nothing.

Jacky? Now there was a name with meanings. Jack had been his father, tall  
and strong and always smiling and lost beyond the call of the universe. And  
Jack was now his baby half-brother, sweet and full of deviltry and wise beyond  
his seven years. Jacky, with his mother's mischievous smile, and the hazel eyes  
of his father; Jacky of the strange glances and deep inspections of marbles and  
bits of string; Jacky, who had made a collection of tree leaves gathered  
throughout time and space by his adoring big brother...

He had Traveled to the future only once, with the Traveler in charge, and he had  
seen the little boy's future self. The Traveler had not forbidden him to go  
forward again, but he never had after that. The future had forever lost its allure,  
because he knew what would become of Jacky the leaf-catcher. He  
shuddered.

"Are you well, Dalek?" asked Josolar, looking concerned.

"Oh yes. Just a little hungry all of a sudden."

"I imagine they'll feed us soon. I hope." They settled in to wait, making the  
scarcest conversation, each taking turns watching Arrhat in her latest  
adventures.

Dinner was small: a bowl of spicy soup, a thin piece of bread. For Wesley, it  
was a feast, gone too soon. After the bowls had been removed, he felt himself  
grow sleepy, and realized he had little idea as to what time it was. He noticed  
that the others were beginning to drag as well.

Kriana called softly over to Arrhat, who grinned vacantly, then crawled into one  
of the bunks. It was a tight fit, but Kriana slipped in beside her, and was asleep  
in a minute. Wesley looked at the remaining bunk and then to the other two.

"You guys can have the bunk. I'll camp out on the floor." They nodded  
agreement, and slipped into slumber quickly. Wes stretched out on the floor,  
and immediately regretted his decision. The cold metal sent a chill through his  
body. After a long time, he fell asleep to no dreams.

VVVVV

In the middle of the night (?) he woke groggily to feel something warm at his  
side. Arrhat had joined him on the floor, and was settling down to sleep, her  
forehead pressed against his shoulder.

"Arrhat," he whispered, poking her in the arm, "what are you doing?"

"Trying to sleep," she answered, to his surprise. "Just don't try anything, or I'll  
have to kill you." She moved a little closer, and began to breath deeply.

"Why ... " he asked into the darkness. He found himself unable to frame the rest  
of the question.

"Because you needed me," she mumbled, consciousness slipping fast away. Her  
breath fell into a pattern of deep snores. Wesley soon drifted to sleep beside  
her, dreaming of cicatrin leaves blowing in a calm wind.

VVVVV

In the morning, or at least when Wes woke up, he noticed that Arrhat had  
moved to a far corner of the cell and was playing a complicated game that  
involved counting her fingers over and over. The other three looked tired still,  
but semi-awake. Kriana stretched once, then seemed to disappear into the wall.  
Trehan began to exercise his somewhat prominent muscles, while Josolar  
observed Arrhat at play.

"I haven't seen such a case in a long time," he said quietly, perhaps to himself.

"You know what's wrong with her?"

"Oh yes. Although I am not in the least equipped to deal with it here. As close  
as I can tell, she has ..." He said a word Wesley did not understand.

"Okay, what is it?"

The doctor looked back at Arrhat. "Imagine having two or more different  
people in your mind, each one wanting equal time and space to use the home  
body."

"Like a Trill?"

Josolar looked at him quizzically. "Trill?"

"Never mind. So how many people do you think she has in her?"  
"From what I've observed, maybe four. I only know T'Riest and Arrhat, but  
I've seen her in other personalities. Have you noticed that sometimes, she will  
look perfectly lucid?" Wesley nodded, remembering the previous night. Had it  
been a dream? "That's definitely a separate personality from when she acts like  
a child, or talks high nonsense."

"What can we do about it?" asked Kriana, the first she had spoken that day.

"If I had access to a medical database, I could see what has been done in the  
past. Try to find a way to merge her selves into one. It's a long process, from  
what I've heard, and I wouldn't know where to begin."

The quiet returned. Breakfast, much the same as dinner, passed in silence.  
Wesley found himself sinking deep into thought. Part of him wanted to glean  
as much information about this place, these people, as possible. Another part  
warned him not to get too attached. The last time, he had let himself become  
too close, and it had nearly cost him his soul, not to mention the mission. His  
thoughts turned to the past, Earth's past, where he had spent months listening  
and learning from an extraordinary group of people.

They had lived in Old New York City, but not in the city itself. Instead, they  
lived secretly in underground tunnels running all over beneath the streets, a  
small group of hurting people who had found a wonderful place to heal. For a  
while, he had taken on the form of one of them, a young man called Mouse.  
The Traveler had kept the real Mouse busy, showing him wondrous devices to  
figure out in the long eternal dark of the Tunnels.

Meanwhile, Wesley had gone back to school. He learned their ways quickly:  
take only what they throw away Above, always help out friends in need, and the  
community above all. The ideals they lived by were revolutionary in a way, but  
also wonderfully familiar. The leader, whom everyone just called "Father," was  
a gentle curmudgeon, older, with a curious accent that seemed to fit him well.

His adopted son was another matter. According to the history Wes had learned,  
the Vulcans were the first alien race to encounter Humans. Yet, the man in the  
Tunnels was obviously some close relative to the Caitians. It was all very  
confusing, especially when it turned out his DNA was compatible enough with  
Human DNA to produce a child without any outside help. And then there was  
that child's mother ...

They called her Catherine, and he thought she was lovely. For the oddest  
reason, she reminded him of Ishara Yar, with the same undying strength, but she  
was far kinder. When she spoke to him, as Mouse, he felt as though he had  
known her forever.

She disappeared. For months, her lover searched for her, trying to find some  
clue to her whereabouts. Wesley helped every way he knew how, scouring the  
unknown city for hours each night. It was, of course, the Traveler who found  
her first.

One night, his strange friend had wakened him, and told him that he must hurry.  
To save time, they Traveled to where she was being held, arriving just as the  
doctor left her. Wes went in alone. She had lain in a birthing chair, strapped  
down, injected with a drug and left to die. Quickly, he retrieved the bottle:  
morphine. He knew enough about such drugs; with the proper treatment, he  
could save her. He frantically dug through the drawers, looking for the  
correct things. His mother would have known what to do immediately, but he  
could only hope what he did was right.

Then he saw the Traveler slowly shake his head. No.

He had almost, almost, done it anyway. He could have abandoned everything  
he had learned in the past eight years, forgotten everything he had accepted  
about the Prime Directive all his life, and he could have helped her live to see  
her baby again. Almost.

He couldn't. The Traveler had told him that his path had been set long ago, and  
for his life, he could not break free from what he had been taught. He  
unstrapped her from the chair. She was very weak, dying from the loss of blood  
and the poison racing through her veins. Somehow, he carried her up the stairs,  
to where the love of her life was waiting. He and the Traveler watched from the  
shadows, heard what she said to him as she died. After that, he could not stay  
in that time, where his thoughts were for an abandoned child crying into the  
night, where every tunnel echoed with the sound of her breathing, growing  
shallower with each whisper.

He had let her die.

Jamie, the real Mouse's best friend, had come the next evening with her round  
face and innocent eyes, wondering what had happened. He could not tell her,  
could not for his life express the grief of letting a friend --- no, someone he had  
grown to love --- just slip away like a dream. He had come close to crying,  
finally  
understanding so much about what the Traveler had meant when he spoke of  
the curse of knowing What Must Be. Jamie had just held his hand the entire  
night.

When morning came, he had begged the Traveler to let him leave, before he  
caused the death of anyone else. He refused to even consider letting harm come  
to his new friends by his own actions or inactions. He had left without even  
telling Jamie good-bye. But of course she would never know that.

Without his being aware of it, hours passed in this state, just sitting and  
remembering times long ago. Dinner, then sleep-time came again, with the  
arrangements much the same as they had been the evening before. The group  
had barely spoken to one another all day.

In the night, Wes became aware of Arrhat, who had again fallen asleep beside  
him, innocent as an angel. He stroked her hair in her sleep protectively,  
wondering how long it would be until he had to hurt her as well.

VVVVV

He awoke slowly, enjoying the fading memories of his dream, a concert in the  
Tunnels held by some of the children. Gradually, he became aware of the hard  
floor, and something else.

Arrhat was sitting across from him, watching him intently. There was no trace  
of madness in her now. At the edge of his perception, he noticed that the others  
still slept.

"Good morning," he offered, not sure of what to expect.

"Hello."

Feeling like an idiot, he continued. "How are you today? You don't seem to  
have been sleeping well."

"Kriana dreams loud." Arrhat's eyes began to wander, taking in the floor, the  
ceiling. Wesley wondered if she actually saw anything. Dreams loud?

"What do you mean?"

But she had already left him far behind.

The others woke in a few minutes, but by that time, Arrhat had returned to her  
normal state, and was happily engaged in making shadows on the wall with her  
hands, mostly butterflies and birds. Breakfast came.

"Not again," moaned Trehan, splashing his spoon into the soup. "I can't keep  
up my strength on this stuff."

"Maybe we're not supposed to keep strong," said Kriana, darkness across her  
eyes. "Maybe they want us to weaken, so we'll be more subservient for  
whatever they have planned." It was a sobering thought.

Josolar took a spoonful of the broth and stared at it for a minute. "You know, I  
once patronized a restaurant where they served this everyday. It was considered  
some of the best soup in the city. One day, an official went through the owner's  
storeroom and found mynolans in the freezer." Trehan and Kriana both looked  
ill. Wesley had heard of mynolans: bat-like creatures not known for their  
cleanliness. Josolar tasted his soup experimentally. "At least we know it isn't  
made of mynolans," he said, his face perfectly bland.

"How?"

"Mynolan soup is edible."

Trehan was the first to start laughing. In moments, Wesley and Kriana were  
having fits, and Josolar had cracked a wide grin. It had been an extremely weak  
joke, but it was the first one any of them had heard in too long. It was also the  
first thing to bring them together.

Trehan calmed down enough to ask, "How many surrealists does it take to  
change an input panel?" He paused, gathering their attention. "Fish!"

Arrhat shook with laughter, her entire body rocked with tremors, while Josolar  
looked perplexed. "Fish?"

Kriana looked at him and said, "Fish!" For no reason, they lost it again. It felt  
wonderful. One of the faceless guards who brought them their meals passed  
outside the door.

"What is going on in here?"

The five of them stopped laughing just long enough to shout in unison: "FISH!"  
The guard's look of incomprehension brought on another wave of laughter. He  
shook his head and left them. This did not help the mass giggling fit in any  
way.

After several long minutes, tears streaming down from each of them, the  
laughter resolved into hiccups. However, by that point, something had  
happened among them. The dam broke. As if to make up for the previous day's  
silence, the words flowed from them, and could not come fast enough.

"When I was small," said Trehan, "my father used to take me to see the ships  
in the bay where he worked. I still remember how large and glorious they  
seemed, and more than anything, I wanted to crawl inside them, see where the  
wires and diodes and little things went."

"I was seventeen," Kriana said, "and he had just turned twenty-three, and I  
thought I was so adult to be seeing someone so old. We used to walk along the  
edge of the jungle, listening to the sounds of the beasts. Remus shone above us  
in the sky so close that it seemed I could capture it if I just stretched a little  
further."

Wes told them, "My father's grandparents had raised him since he was small,  
and he loved them like his real parents. I'm even named after my  
great-grandfather. Sort of. After Dad died, they held my mother responsible,  
though I don't know why. I haven't seen them since I was five, but I hear from  
my great-aunt now and then. They just refuse to see either of us, as though they  
can feel better by not remembering."

Josolar spoke. "We stayed up to watch the sunrise, deep mauve against the  
morning sky, playing upon the clouds like some sweet child. The air was so  
cold that I could taste the frost in it, but we wrapped ourselves together in the  
blanket. I realized at that moment that I would never see another daybreak quite  
as lovely, but she was there with me, and all the dawns were in her."

"I was twelve ..."

"It was summer ..."

"We held hands ..."

"I was home ... " The stories came without slowing, without pattern, flashing  
bright images of lives so perfect in their ... had he thought humanity?  
Friendship was planted, took root, and blossomed in the hours after breakfast.  
They talked late into what felt like night, sharing stories of the past and hopes  
for what the future might bring. Only Arrhat did not speak, but sat quietly, her  
wide eyes touching lightly upon each of them, silent as wind. At last, when  
fatigue set in, and they prepared to sleep, she spoke, but only one simple  
declaration.

"I have been places to which none of you will ever travel."

Suddenly, Wesley was no longer tired.

"What did you say?" But she did not respond.

If she slept on the floor that night, he did not know it.

"Wake up! Wake up!" The voice of the guard roared into his slumbering brain.  
"The ride is over."

The door opened, two guards walked in, and without ceremony herded them out  
into the hallway, where other similarly disoriented people milled around. The  
crowd must have held fifty prisoners stuffed into the corridor all told, with half  
that many guards holding disruptors. No one seemed willing to see if they'd use  
them.

Wes became dimly aware that he had been separated from his friends. He  
turned against the motion of the crowd, trying to catch a familiar face.  
However, he had only been among them briefly, and was still in the mindset of  
"all Romulans look alike." Trying to see Trehan's bulk would be his best bet,  
but the others crowded too close, and he was lost.

Then, he felt someone take his hand. Arrhat had somehow found him. She  
said nothing, only looked at him. Her eyes were light blue, like Earth's horizon  
in the early afternoon, full of light and mystery, like his mother's eyes.

The crowd pushed on, and the pair found themselves outside the transport in  
full daylight outside an imposing wooden fortress with rolls of barbed wire  
ringed around the edges. Wes made a wager with himself that the wire was  
electrified. Thick jungle pressed in around the edges, hugging the structure. As  
he watched, a large hawk-like creature rose from the trees, swooped low over  
the fortress, and flew away. The entranceway opened, and the prisoners were  
led inside, to a courtyard in the center of the compound. A medium-sized dais  
had been set up at the front, made out of lumber.

They stood there for several long minutes, and the heat of the place began to  
press down on Wesley, who had never been one much for humidity. He hoped  
whatever was going to happen next would get itself over with soon. As if  
reading his thoughts, Arrhat gently squeezed his hand and smiled, her brown  
eyes gazing warmly at him. Brown?

A man, a bronze-haired Romulan looking somewhat important, stepped to the  
dais.

"Welcome, my friends, to your new home. I am General Tokath, administrator  
of this place."

Tokath??!! A hundred memories, stories really, flashed in his mind. A blasted  
shuttle; a Klingon woman pulled from the cockpit who wasn't Klingon, sweet  
Ba'el with the beautiful smile who had left her home for the sake of love just  
before a brutal war between her two peoples; Alexander asking Deanna to be  
his mother; Worf wanting both, unsure how to tell either; the twins, whose  
impending arrival had settled the matter for then, but not forever. Worf had  
come to this place, seeking his father, and instead found a place where Klingons  
and Romulans lived in peace. Belle (as Wes called her) had told him only a  
little about her home, although he had asked often. And her father's name had  
been Tokath. But what year was it? Would he see a younger Belle looking  
shyly from a corner? Had she even been born yet? The questions nearly  
drowned out the rest of Tokath's speech.

"Each of you was brought here to help us build this colony for the duration of  
your sentence. When your time has finished, you may go back to Romulus, or  
you may stay here as a permanent citizen. You will have plenty of time to  
decide.

"While you are here, you must remember our primary rule. You will cooperate  
with everyone here, be they Klingon, Human, or fellow Romulan, and you will  
treat everyone with respect. If you do not, you will be sent on the next transport  
back to prison, and I intend to make your life miserable before you go."

Then, all thoughts of Belle, Arrhat, and the rest of the universe slipped out of  
his mind, possibly for good, as a Klingon man and a Human woman stepped  
onto the dais beside Tokath.  
"These are the liaisons for the Klingons and the Humans of our colony. You  
will treat them with the same courtesy you would treat me. This is L'Kor." The  
large man fixed the audience with a scowl. "And this is my wife, Tasha."

VVVVV  
Chapter 3: Lost and Found

Wesley's face went slack, shock racing through his system. At last, he knew  
why he had come to this place, this time. Gradually, he became aware of a  
strange woman's hand in his own, of the wooden stage, and upon that stage ...

He had forgotten how beautiful Tasha was. Compared to the others in their  
circle of friends, she had really changed very little. Her bright hair was longer  
that it had been, and brushed softly against her shoulders, while her sea-green  
eyes seemed to be a little deeper, a touch sadder. There were lines around her  
mouth that had not been there before, but a smile graced her lips, and it made up  
for years. Her outfit was a simple tunic gathered at the waist, with a light,  
forest-green cloak over her shoulders, a casual style accenting her figure.  
Which had changed. Either she had been eating much better since (when?), or  
there was going to be a little problem arriving in about four or five months.

He tried to think back, to remember when he had seen her last. The only picture  
he could form was of a hologram she had asked to be shown at her funeral.  
And of course, Sela. The first time he had seen a vid of the Romulan  
commander, he had nearly choked. The resemblance had been so close,  
physically at any rate. Sadly, Sela had possessed none of her mother's goodness  
of spirit. She had backed the Klingon Civil War of '69, and later lured  
Ambassador Spock to Romulus in order to invade Vulcan, nearly killing two of  
Wes's closest friends in the process. Sela had told then-Captain Picard of her  
origins, how her mother had been captured in the past and married to a  
Romulan general, how she had given birth to Sela shortly thereafter, how she  
had died ...

Now, fifteen years after he had last seen her alive, she stood before him, not five  
meters away, smiling gently upon the crowd of Romulan prisoners who were no  
longer captives precisely.

"Dalek, that fine cloak you are admiring has already been promised. Perhaps  
you can persuade the tailor to find you another." Arrhat's soft whisper against  
his cheek brought him swiftly back to reality.

"Uhh. What?"

"That pretty green cloak you have been staring at for the past five minutes. It is  
already being worn by someone, and I do not believe you will be able to borrow  
it." Her mad eyes looked past his, into his thoughts. Great. She noticed. The  
entire colony probably noticed. He felt a flush rise to his cheeks, and hoped it  
was green.

"No worries," she whispered. "I believe the cloak will need tailoring soon  
enough. The hem will be too short, I think." Then she laughed, but very  
quietly, so as not to attract attention.  
Wes became aware of Tokath, who had finished his welcome. "You will now  
be escorted to the infirmary, and then you will receive your quarter  
assignments."

The crowd pressed into him again, and he lost Arrhat's hand. He looked around  
wildly for her, fearing what she would do in such a place, and what it might do  
to her, but she had melted into the press of bodies. He allowed it all to wash  
over him, carry him to the infirmary, where he realized with a sickened feeling  
that he would have a lot of explaining to do.

VVVVV

After waiting for what seemed like hours, his name was called, and he entered  
the doctor's cubicle. The lights were too bright, and the room actually seemed  
chilly compared to the wet heat of the outdoors. To one side, a large golden  
bird glared at him from its cage. Wes shuddered inwardly at the scrutiny.

"Remove your clothing," said the doctor with no emotion. He complied, albeit  
reluctantly, trying to work his breathing exercises and centering himself for the  
false scan.

Saying nothing, the doctor ran a medscanner over him, her features cold. He  
decided she could use a few lessons in bedside manner, preferably Starfleet  
Medical style. He shivered, trying to concentrate on fooling the scanner. He  
thought of everything he had ever read on Vulcanoid physiology:  
blood-chemistry, heart rates, a thousand details.

No wonder the Traveler chose a blank scan for his baseline. It was a hell of a lot  
easier. His breathing deepened; the noises from the machine kept steady. After  
forever, she turned it off.  
"Other than a slight fluctuation in your heart rate, you seem fairly healthy." As  
he moved to gather his clothing, she stopped him. "That won't be necessary.  
You will receive other apparel." She pointed towards the opposite door. "Out  
there."

"I have to get something ..." He reached for the heartstone.

"Drop them. You may take nothing with you."

"But ... "

"Go." She did not shout. She had no need. Just like with Catherine, he really  
had no choice. He walked through the door, wondering how he would ever  
explain this to Robin.

The next room had a small shower that sprayed him quickly, then dried him  
before he reached the opposite side of the room and through the next door. A  
guard waited there for him, with a large pile of folded garments.

"Name?" Wes had an unpleasant flashback.

"Dalek." The guard was not going to argue the point.

"Here." He handed him a small bundle. "Put this on."

He dressed quickly, grateful for the feel of fabric against his skin once more.

"This is your room assignment. Everyone sleeps in the barracks for now." Wes  
thanked him, and went to find his room.

Outside again, he found himself walking freely for the first time since the  
whole crazy ride had started. Admittedly, he was still in a form of prison, but  
the air brushed warm against his face, and no one was pointing a disruptor at  
him. It was a nice change.

He looked at the padd with his room assignment, trying to decipher the guard's  
writing.

After a few minutes, another Romulan walked out of the infirmary, looking not  
quite so lost as he was. He followed him carefully to the barracks, trying not to  
appear too confused. He reached the door, pressed the "Open" panel, and  
stepped into his new home.

Four sets of bunk beds leaned against the bare walls. The blankets looked thin  
and cheap, and it smelled of old sweat. There was no window. Five of the  
bunks already seemed to be used, with blankets covering three beds, and bare  
grating for the other two. Blankets lay folded at the foot of the other three  
bunks, all on top. Great. He just loved heights. He selected a bed with a  
blanketed bottom. He had nothing against Klingons, but he had heard stories  
about Klingon snores that truly frightened him. He climbed up to his new bunk  
and lay down, waiting for whoever else was coming to arrive.

In a few minutes, he heard the door swish behind him, and the sound of voices  
conversing in Romulan. Familiar voices. He sat up.

Josolar and Trehan did not notice him at first, looking with distaste at their  
surroundings.

"The decor leaves much to be desired."

"You mean it stinks. This is gonna be a long stay."

Wes said casually, "I've stayed in worse."

"Dalek!" Trehan grinned widely, while Josolar stared. "I didn't see what  
happened to you when they herded us out."

Wes jumped down. "I know. I found Arrhat, but she disappeared after  
Tokath's speech. Either of you see Kriana?"

Josolar shook his head. "I kept an eye out for all of you, but I didn't even locate  
this reprobate until just now." Trehan glared at him, then grinned.

"You're just jealous because Kriana likes me better."

Wes laughed. He had believed the others gone for good; now he knew that he  
would have missed them. "Calm down, kids. Now let me welcome you to  
our new home. You seem to have your choice of Klingon or Romulan  
bedfellows." He indicated the bunks.

"Doctor, I know you love to study alien societies and such. Please feel free to  
take the bunk with the Klingon."

"Trehan, you're so kind, but I would not dream of depriving you an opportunity  
to increase your cultural awareness. I must insist."

"Really ... " They both turned to Wes, their pasted on grins deepening. He  
knew what was coming next.

"Forget it. Klingons snore."

Trehan's face took on the oddest expression, while Josolar asked, "And how,  
pray tell, would you know that?"

"Trust me." His mother had told him. When he had asked her where she  
came by the information, she had merely said, "Mukbara class." He hadn't  
pressed it.

Eventually, they compromised: Josolar was to spend the first night in the  
"Klingon bunk," Trehan the second. Wes had the funny feeling he would be  
commandeered into switching bunks before long. Soon, they became bored and  
restless, so they began to wander the hallway looking for familiar faces,  
preferable two female familiar faces, with Wes quietly looking for a third.  
However, no one they asked seemed to have seen or heard from either of the  
women. From some speaker which none of them could locate, the new arrivals  
were informed that the midday meal was about to begin in the common room.

"Perhaps we can locate them after we have eaten," suggested Josolar. Wes  
realized they had not eaten breakfast, and dinner had been that awful broth.

The common room was actually a misnamed group of dining rooms projecting  
from a common center, where some unidentifiable food product was being  
served. Wes kept his eyes peeled for anyone he might recognize, especially a  
certain Human liaison. He caught a brief glance of blonde hair, but it had gone  
before he could see the owner. Beyond feeling by this point, he took a tray, and  
waited in the eternal line.

Trehan got to the front first, and inspected the food as he brought it by the other  
two.

Wes asked hesitantly, "What's for lunch?" Trehan looked down at his tray,  
then straight at both of them, a gleam in his eye that was either mirth or  
incipient tears.

"Fish."

VVVVV

After lunch, during which the three had difficulty keeping straight faces, and  
having nothing better to do, they headed back to their room. They followed a  
Romulan walking with two Humans, the first Wes had seen other than Tasha,  
back through the  
corridors, until they reached their quarters. Which all six of them promptly  
entered.

The strange Romulan looked at them. "You must be our new roommates." To  
the Humans, "It would appear that we're full."

"Great. Now y'all outnumber us," said one of the Human men in a soft drawl.

"Don't be so rude," said the other. "That's an order."

"Yessir, Captain, Sir!" The Human provided an overdramatic salute.  
Captain??? "Ensign Dodge Imno. Pleeztameetcha." Imno bowed deeply, his  
red hair flopping, which made the action border on the ludicrous. Wes thought  
that he looked, just a little, like a duck.

The man addressed as "Captain" rolled his eyes.

"Lieutenant Richard Castillo." Wes stared at the tall man, his dark hair  
brushed out of a rugged, tired face. There was something about him, his  
carriage, the look of seeing Something More in his eyes, that seemed both  
familiar and frightening. He had seen him before, somewhere. He was positive  
of it, yet the name meant nothing to him.

"I am Ekan," said the Romulan quietly. "Our other roommates have not  
finished eating yet, but they will join us soon. Everyone has today free because  
of your arrival." Ekan's voice was soft, almost female in timbre, in cool  
harmony with his thin frame. Gold highlights touched his hair, and his eyes  
were grey, something Wes had never seen in a Romulan. Then again, before  
today, he had never seen a Romulan with blue eyes, assuming he hadn't  
imagined the whole thing.

As if to support his growing suspicion that she could read minds, Arrhat chose  
that moment to glide in the room. Without saying a word, she threw her arms  
around Ekan's neck and kissed him passionately while the others watched in  
amazement. When she came up for air nearly a minute later, Ekan had a  
flabbergasted expression on his face.

"Err ... Hello."

"Have you two met?" asked Trehan.

"Not yet."

Arrhat released Ekan and smiled angelically at Imno and Castillo. "Hello.  
Captain Aileen Marcus of the _Acland_. Where do you boys hail from?" It  
took Wesley a total of fifteen seconds before he realized that she had spoken in  
flawless Standard.

VVVVV

The two Klingons, K'toktehn and Qu'aemon, arrived a few minutes later, but by  
that time, Arrhat had slipped back into her usual state, inspecting the floor with  
interest. Ekan watched her carefully, as if worried that she would kiss him  
again, and looking somewhat disappointed that she did not. Wes wondered  
where her quarters were, and if she would take it into her head to drop by later  
that night.

He noticed that although everyone was speaking civilly to one another, a certain  
coolness pervaded everything. The Humans seemed uncomfortable around the  
Klingons, but more so around the Romulans, while the Klingons did not seem  
overly friendly to either group. Neither of the latter made much conversation,  
something he could understand. There was a hunger in their eyes, an  
unnameable fire that seemed to be guttering dangerously low.

His own friends were chatting amicably enough with Ekan, who turned out to  
be a guard. Tokath had specifically ordered that the guards bunk with the  
prisoners, and Ekan did not seem overly opposed to the idea.

The only one completely at ease in the room was Arrhat. It was almost funny.  
Out of nowhere, a stray thought struck him: she was very much like a child. He  
wondered if he would be quite as accepting. Although he stood with the  
Romulans as one of them, his sympathies were for the Humans and the  
Klingons. Where had they come from? Belle had never said, and had certainly  
never mentioned the Humans. The questions piled up again. He turned to  
Castillo.

"What ship did you say you served on?"

"I didn't. We were on the USS _Enterprise_." A cold feeling spread through  
him. His discomfort must have been apparent. "You've heard of it?"

"Once, in an old song ... " He quickly covered: "I'm a traveling singer by trade.  
I pick up songs everywhere. Would you like to hear one?"

"Not now." The group slowly grew silent. Wes felt a return of the first day on  
the transport: awkward silence of strangers tossed together by chance and  
regulations. This time, though, they were of three different species which had  
been hell-bent on annihilating one another for the past century or so. This was  
not going to be a fun arrangement.

VVVVV

Arrhat accompanied them to dinner, holding Ekan's left hand and Wesley's  
right. She almost seemed to float down the corridor, skipping now and then to  
break up the monotony. Qu'aemon was warming to her, but K'Toktehn said  
nothing more than absolutely necessary, and tended to frown at her when her  
attention was elsewhere, which was most of the time.

When they reached the dining area, both Klingons moved off, to Wesley's  
disappointment. He had hoped to find out more about them.

Fortunately, the sight that greeted him next made up for the temporary loss. A  
group of Romulan and Human women stood to one side of the hall, talking  
quietly. Among them were Kriana and Tasha.

With a cry of delight, Arrhat raced over to Kriana and hugged her tightly. The  
others joined them. Kriana held on to Arrhat for a moment, then quickly  
hugged the three men.

"It looks like your friends found you," said Tasha, patting Kriana on the  
shoulder. "She was worried that all of you had forgotten about her."

"Never!" stated Trehan, a bit too forcefully. "We're the Fabulous Five of Fish!"  
He grinned, while those not in on the joke looked confused.

Wesley had barely heard him. He listened, drinking in her voice, and trying  
desperately not to stare at Tasha. He wanted nothing more than to hold her, tell  
her that everything was just fine now, that he was going to take her back home.  
He did no such thing, of course, but he very much wanted to, very much indeed.  
She did not notice him at all, which was good. It would not have been easy to  
explain. Instead, she spoke to Castillo.

"You're looking well, Lieutenant. Hard labor doesn't seem to have harmed you  
too much."

"You also seem fairly well, Lieutenant. How are things?"

"Things are fine. Sela asks me for stories of home." Sela? So she had been  
born already. But Sela had not mentioned a younger sibling, which meant that  
she either did not think it was  
important, or that the child Tasha now carried would die young, perhaps even  
before birth. There was a distinct likelihood of either, as Sela had also  
neglected to mention Ba'el, who now appeared to be her half-sister. Wesley  
didn't want to think about that one.

"What do you tell her, Lieutenant?" Wes sensed the  
undercurrents flowing quietly through the conversation, saw the half-hidden  
look upon her face, the answering pain in his. Yet, their words and bearing  
suggested nothing more than the most passing acquaintance. So much was said  
in the mundane speech.

Tokath saw them, and walked over. The subtlest change came over the pair,  
but Kriana was laughing with Trehan, and no one appeared the wiser.

"Hello, my dear. Making friends with the new arrivals?" He slipped his arm  
around her.

"Just trying to make everyone feel at home." She smiled absently at the group.  
"After all, we're going to be here for quite some time."

"We will indeed. Why don't you invite your friends to dinner?"

"Maybe soon, after they've settled in." She suddenly looked very  
uncomfortable. Wesley wondered if it had anything to do with the prospect of  
spending time with Lieutenant Castillo in her husband's presence.

"Perhaps later, then." Tokath's suggestion had lost, but the man himself gave  
the distinct impression of having won.

The two of them moved off. Wesley watched as a small tow- headed Romulan  
girl joined them. Tasha lifted her up, and for a moment, the most radiant  
expression he had ever seen crossed the woman's sad face. His heart warmed at  
the sight, then froze. This sweet child, the center of her existence, would betray  
her mother in less than a year.

VVVVV

After dinner, Kriana left for the infirmary. With a nervous air, she told them  
that the doctor had wanted to speak with her. Josolar accompanied her, wanting  
to see what kind of equipment was on hand, and maybe to offer his services.

The other people around the hall headed towards the common area outside.  
Wes and his shrinking group of companions followed them. Darkness had  
gathered outside, warm and enfolding. Torches were set up around the  
perimeter, and a larger fire burned in a crude centerpiece. Most of the colony's  
Klingon population seemed to be gathered around it, with a few small  
groupings of Romulans or Humans interspersed throughout.

Castillo and Imno joined one of the Human groups, and Wesley very nearly  
went with them before he stopped himself. There was a comfort in being  
among one's own species, and his necessary distance from them made him  
instantly, achingly aware of just how far he was from home.

He asked Ekan casually what day it was, then tried to calculate just When he  
was. With some amusement, he realized that at that moment, somewhere in the  
universe, there was a med student in her last year of school suffering from  
morning sickness and idly wanting to castrate her husband.

Fortunately for all parties involved, both feelings would eventually pass.

He saw Tasha across the fire, holding Sela's hand and watching the unfolding  
events. Just knowing that she was there made it easier. He began to watch the  
Klingons in their rite.

L'Kor, the Klingon liaison, had lifted a handful of dirt and was singing as he  
walked around the flame. He tossed the soil into the fire, causing sparks to fly.  
The others kept time by stomping their feet, singing at certain parts of the song.  
It was magical and tragic at the same time. The people had lost their home,  
their freedom, their honor, and now had only this song and this ritual to cling to,  
if one could forgive the pun.

Meanwhile, the children squirmed while Romulans talked in the background, a  
very rude response as far as Wes was concerned. On the other hand, the  
Humans, including Tasha, seemed entranced by the fire and the spell created by  
L'Kor's song, whether they knew the meaning or not. It spoke of another time,  
when honor and glory were more than words, and victory was still possible.  
Belle had sung it once, very softly, as a lullaby while she watched his little  
brother one deep night.

When the ritual had ended, the little band of Romulans returned in silence to the  
men's quarters. They found Josolar and Kriana waiting there for them. Kriana's  
eyes were green-rimmed, and she trembled. With a glance from the doctor,  
Ekan mumbled something about looking for Qu'aemon and left the room.  
Arrhat took Kriana's shaking hands, then held her.

"What happened?" demanded Trehan.

Josolar placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, then said quietly, "The  
doctor wanted to run her examination again, to confirm the results. Kriana is  
pregnant."

In the silence that followed, Wes asked softly, "Is it ... his?" Kriana nodded,  
unable to speak.

"If you would like," Josolar said, looking uncomfortable, "I can arrange  
something with Dr. Mirith. You should not be forced to carry this child."

"What are you talking about?" asked Trehan. "It's her baby, for the sake of  
Toq!"

"But she did not ask for this baby. She should not have to pay the price for  
that _monster's_ actions!"

"That doesn't matter! This is her child, no matter who the father was. Killing it  
would be murder!"

"Stop it!" Arrhat's shout rang through the room, startling them all. "Just... just  
stop it." Kriana sobbed quietly into her shoulder. Arrhat stroked her hair  
gently, whispering, "It'll be okay. Shhh... It'll all be okay."

VVVVV  
Chapter 4: The Lady and the Lake

In the darkness, Trehan, Josolar and Wes conversed quietly from their bunks,  
trying not to disturb their sleeping roommates. However, Qu'aemon's snoring  
seemed to drown everything else out quite nicely.

"What are we going to do? That baby's going to cause a lot of problems."

"Whatever she decides, we will have to accept. We cannot command her one  
way or the other. For one thing, she outranks all of us by a galaxy."

"Hmm?"

"Think about it. She was Turin's chief aide, and she had friends in the highest  
ranks of our society. If things had gone differently, I would not have been  
surprised to see her elected to the Senate within the next ten years."

Trehan snorted. "Not with a criminal record. She'll be lucky to be allowed in  
any post now. Just like the rest of us."

"I hope she's okay," Wes whispered.

"Yeah. Arrhat isn't exactly the best person to watch her."

"She's all right," he replied too quickly.

Trehan rolled over to one elbow, and stared across the darkness to him. "Are  
you fond of her?"

"He certainly sounds as though he is."

"No! I just think there's more to her than what you think, is all. You just  
dismiss her." He was greeted by kissing sounds from Trehan. In the next top  
bunk, Ekan laughed very softly. Wes leaned over. "Not you too."

"She seems ... interesting." Ekan smiled, then rolled over and went to sleep.  
Having exhausted their conversation, Josolar and then Trehan quickly followed  
suit.

Wes remained awake, staring at the ceiling, and debating whether he should risk  
a Change back to his normal shape. After a while, he felt watched. From the  
opposite side of the room, K'Toktehn's eyes glittered in the darkness. Unnerved  
by the scrutiny, Wes casually rolled over, and pulled the blanket over his head.  
So much for Changing.

VVVVV

The following day began a new chapter in Wesley's life. At daybreak, all the  
colonists were awakened and sent to breakfast, an almost quiet affair filled with  
the sounds of chewing and  
complaints at the early hour, but little else. Afterwards, work began.

The condition of the compound was far from wonderful. The only  
semi-permanent buildings thus far were the common room, the infirmary, and  
the barracks. The outer walls themselves were temporary, to be replaced with  
permanent living quarters in the walls of the place. In his mind, Wes saw the  
final structure as a kind of castle, with alternating sandstone blocks, and a large  
tower in the center. No doubt, he thought, where the kidnapped princess lives,  
waiting to be rescued. The timeliness of the idea, not to mention its patent  
ludicrousness, brought a smile to his lips now and then at night, when could  
breathe. He learned to manage on very little sleep, for when the others snored,  
he had time to Change back for a while, which did wonders for his occasional  
headaches. Most importantly, staying up late gave him time to think.

Tokath's plan had become clear to him as the days progressed, and it was  
brilliant. The Klingon and Human prisoners might have been enough to build  
the prison camp themselves, hauling the blocks from a neighboring quarry  
under the careful watch of Romulan guards. However, the general was  
intelligent enough to realize what this would do to the morale of his charges.  
Had the prisoners been mere slaves to their guards, they would have either  
revolted or died. For the Klingons, at least, there could be no middle ground.  
The Humans would most certainly have survived, but with no other thought  
than freedom. Considering the relatively small number of guards, and the  
isolation from Romulus, the situation could quickly become untenable.

From the first inception of the camp, Tokath must have seen the problems. But  
what to do? By allowing a representative of each race to help administrate, he  
could alleviate some of the pressure. People who thought they had some say in  
their lives were that much less likely to revolt. The racial tensions, on the other  
hand, would not be so easy to circumvent.

Tokath had finally chosen the one option that made all three races equal: he had  
asked for convicts from Romulus, no doubt a certain caliber, say the political  
objectors, the vagrants, the mad. These he put on an equivalent level with the  
others in the colony. Suddenly, the Romulans were just as oppressed as  
everyone else, and that oppression did not seem so terrible to them.  
The warden had taken care of his wards, feeding them adequate if not  
wonderful food (Wesley for one could not wait until the replicators finally went  
on line), giving them freedom within the compound, and occasional liberties  
outside. Then he had delivered the coup: instead of calling their home a prison  
camp, he labeled it a colony, and inspired them with the notion that they were  
not building a jail, but creating a home. It was an incredible plan, sweeping in  
its ideas, and in the notion that three species, so long in conflict, could work  
together in peace. Wesley admired him for the sheer audacity to think such a  
thing when he had surely been trained all his life that Romulans were the  
superior race.

On the level of grandiose dreams, Tokath's goal should have been paramount  
over all. Yet, the plan forgot the simplicity of the individual dreams of the  
colonists. The Humans would happily die for an ideal, but only if they believed  
strongly in it. The Klingons needed their honor. The Romulans had their own  
ideas about how life should go. No one was truly happy.

Every day, Trehan talked about what he would do when he got back home,  
which ships he would work on, the places he would visit. With a distant look,  
he would mention another city he had always wanted to see, while his muscles  
tensed for the next stone.

Josolar, quickly ensconcing himself in the infirmary, spoke longingly in the  
evenings of real diagnostic equipment, rather than the modified tricorders  
with which he had to keep them all well. Of his daughter he said very little, but  
there were times when his eyes were far, and he would smile sadly when one of  
the colony's few children skipped by.

Kriana said nothing about home, other than passing references now and then to  
old friends. She spent her free hours in the company of the administrators when  
she could, and had volunteered to be a section watch, meaning basically that she  
woke people in the morning. It was a menial job in comparison to working at  
the highest levels of Romulan government, but at least it returned to her some  
of the authority that she had so suddenly lost. As to her impending arrival, she  
made no mention. So far, her choice of action was to take none. She lived her  
life from day to day, quietly regaining herself, and spending a large amount of  
time with Tasha, with whom she appeared to have developed a bond.

Wesley bitterly envied her if only for that, since he had been unable to see  
Tasha for more than a minute at a time, and then always accompanied. He  
wanted desperately to get her aside long enough to tell her who he was, and find  
a means of escape. If worse came to worse, he could stop time to do it, but then  
she would be stopped too. There was no way to win but follow Kriana's  
example and wait to see what would come. Patience, alas, was not his strong  
suit.

And then there was Arrhat. Alone among them, she seemed happy to be exactly  
where she was, laughing, skipping, and generally getting on everyone's nerves,  
only to make up with her head innocently on the offended's shoulder. Rarely  
did any two of her sentences agree in tense, form, or meaning, but that did not  
matter. Often, after a particularly difficult day, when the stones just would not  
budge, she would creep into the men's quarters and simply be there, and that  
would be enough. She had made it a personal quest to make them all smile,  
either through a strange nickname (translated, Imno had become "The Artful  
Dodger," Qu'aemon "Fuzzball," and K'Toktehn "Papa Bear", to which he only  
deepened his frown and said nothing), or a particularly inappropriate  
observation at exactly the wrong time. It usually worked. She was group little  
sister for the Fabulous Five of Fish, as Trehan had dubbed them (even though  
the five had grown to include Ekan and Qu'aemon, and occasionally the two  
Humans).

K'toktehn remained aloof, but not coldly so. He had struck up a friendship with  
Imno, asking about his home and his former life with a patient air completely at  
odds with the stereotypical Klingon temper. For Imno only, he would become  
more than a shape in the shadows, actually smiling now and then. He simply  
did not choose to associate with the others, but preferred to sit quietly in the  
background, perhaps listening, perhaps not.

Amongst them, Wesley sat and smiled, and wondered inside what would  
happen to these people's lives when he took away the light of their warden's life.

VVVVV

They had all settled into routine: breakfast, then off to the quarry to haul stones  
in the morning, then lunch, then slowly shaping the stones into blocks, then  
dinner. Afterwards, there would be a gathering in the common area, a time for  
ceremony, or for sharing songs and stories before sweet, if painful, sleep.

So far, Wesley's frame, obviously weaker than that of the average Romulan,  
had not come into question. Whenever he dropped a tool, or could not quite  
hold up his end of a brick, he blamed a bad elbow, and laughed it off before  
Josolar could get concerned. As time passed, his real muscles, hidden by the  
Change, developed. Unfortunately, this also meant that for the first month or  
so, his body was in agony nearly every night as it realized what was happening  
to it.

No matter how strong he might become, which admittedly was not that  
powerful no matter what he might try, he wouldn't stand a chance in a fight with  
a Romulan or Klingon, and there would be about even bets with another  
Human. He needed to establish himself as a noncombatant from the beginning.  
Thus, he made his mark early, singing old Romulan ballads he had picked up  
during his travels, and interspersing them with Klingon songs he had learned  
from Worf and Belle.

One night, he had sung a favorite of his, a tune with roots back on Vulcan,  
although he had changed the lyrics. It was a sad tale of a woman born to pain,  
then granted happiness only to lose it once more. He called it "The Lady of the  
Blue Ship," as the woman at the end of the song chose to ride on the doomed  
Blue Ship with her lover than stay in the unreal world of the Starry Isle. He was  
extremely proud of the song itself, the first he had ever written. When he had  
finished, the others had applauded politely.

"Dalek," Kriana said carefully, "you were a professional singer?"

"Yes," he beamed. "What did you think of the song?"

The others began to shift in place, not meeting his eyes. Arrhat, to whom tact  
was a four-lettered word, had no such qualms.

"You were fortunate to have been arrested. Otherwise, you probably would  
have starved."

VVVVV

Every fourth day was a half-day of work, with time off the rest of the day.  
Some people used the time to sleep, others to recreate. The children in the  
colony, three Klingons, four Romulans and Sela, started a series of games  
specifically for the half-days. These were the times Wes tried to find Tasha  
alone, but something or someone thwarted him at each turn, no matter how well  
he planned. Usually, she had meetings during that time with L'Kor and her  
husband, with Kriana often assisting, planning the next phase of the buildings.  
Kriana would come back in the evenings both exhausted and delighted at the  
new things being planned.

After the first few days, the gates were opened to the colonists, letting them  
explore the outdoors if they so chose. The group, suffering from more than a  
little cabin fever, took the opportunity.

Outside the compound, the jungle pressed in around them. There were a  
number of animals native to the planet, including the needle-snakes Wes had  
been warned about. Fortunately, there were no large carnivores nearby; the  
biggest one was a feline about a meter long from nose to tip of tail, and its  
favorite snack consisted of local birds. Along their walks, the group had found  
small piles of feathers marking the end of one of the unfortunate creatures.

Trails, possibly trod by some of the herbivores that  
frequented the place, wound through the trees, most going nowhere. One,  
though, had led to a decent-sized watering hole. After a few misses, most of the  
Fabulous Five (or Seven, or Nine, depending on the day) had its location down  
to memory. With the heat of the planet constantly surrounding them, the pond  
made an excellent place to swim, and the sun would hit it just as they arrived  
after the half-day of work.

Still, the jungle was a dangerous place, and they always traveled in pairs if not  
groups of three or more. On the fourth free day, a needle-snake had attacked  
and killed a Klingon prisoner, a young man named Taydok.

He had been walking with two friends when the snake had fallen on him from  
above. One of the others killed the snake, while the third carried him back to  
the compound. He was dead by the time he reached the infirmary. Once the  
Klingon Rite of Death had been observed (which took all of about a minute),  
Doctor Mirith performed an autopsy, assisted by Josolar.

Later that evening, looking drawn and tired, the young doctor reported back to  
his friends.

"The toxin was all through his system. We found traces of it even in his bone  
structure. The poison attacks the central nervous system, and neutralizes the  
chemical signals from the brain to the muscles, including the heart, and even  
between neurons. I'd say he was beyond help within ten minutes, maybe less.

"Dr. Mirith is going to ask Tokath to organize a hunt for the snakes. She wants  
to extract the venom and develop some kind of antidote for it."

"A hunt? Is she nuts?" asked Trehan incredulously. "Those things can kill  
you!"

"That's the point, Trehan," said Kriana drily. "If we can catch one, we can find  
the antidote and then it won't kill us."

"You go out and get yourself killed by one of those things. I have better  
things to do."

Arrhat, looking at nothing in particular, said, "Trehan's afraid of snakes."

"No I'm not!" he said quickly. He looked around, saw that something more  
was necessary. "I don't have to like them. But I'm not afraid of them." No one  
felt like arguing with him.

VVVVV

Tokath announced the next day that anyone who would volunteer for the hunt  
for a needle-snake would not have to work in the quarry until one was found.  
Castillo, Imno, K'toktehn, and Qu'aemon immediately signed up; Trehan flatly  
refused. Ekan found himself assigned to gate duty. Wesley put off making the  
decision for a day, then was chagrined to discover that Arrhat and Kriana had  
also gone on the hunt.

Nearly two-thirds of the workforce chose to search for snakes rather than cut  
stones, and frankly, as the humid day pressed on, Wes wished he were among  
them. Trehan was silent as the sandstone itself the entire day.

The end of the hunt came quickly. By evening, three needle- snakes had been  
found, with no casualties except among the snakes. Two of them had been  
brutally killed, and the third was near death when the team that had caught the  
creature brought it to the infirmary for extraction of the venom.

"Mirith removed as much of the venom as possible from the snake," Josolar  
told them later. "It did not even struggle; it merely lay on the table," he glanced  
to K'Toktehn, "with some restraint, of course." The large Klingon had been in  
the group that had captured the needle-snake, but had been strangely mute about  
the whole affair.

"We did not need to hold it. There was no fight left," he said, simply.

"Still, I wouldn't have wanted to do it alone. After she was finished, Mirith told  
us to kill it and bring the other two, hoping that perhaps we could get more from  
them."

"Good thing, too," said Trehan. "It could've bitten you or one of the others.  
Then where would you be?"

"We'll see what happens when the poison sacs regenerate."

That took a moment to sink in. Kriana spoke quietly, "You didn't kill it."

"No. The other two were already dead." He paused. Wes had heard what  
shape the other snakes had been in after their capture. One of them had killed,  
therefore all of them were to be destroyed. "I could not justify killing it. I told  
Mirith that I would look after it until it recovered. We may even be able to get  
more venom to work on a serum. When it is time, I can release it."

Imno nearly exploded. "Great! You have the deadliest thing in the jungle in  
your office, and you want to let it go??!! For what? So it can attack one of  
us when we're walking someday? Or maybe you'd rather just let it go in here,  
hmmm?" Castillo flashed him a warning look. "Some night when the rest of us  
are asleep, just let your little baby loose and see what happens??!!"

"Dodge ... " Castillo began. Imno spun on him.

"Don't even tell me the thought hasn't crossed your mind. Just wake up his  
friends, let the snake go, and whaddaya know? No more Klingons or Humans  
to worry about."

"That's enough, Ensign!" Castillo's voice carried through the room. Then, more  
quietly, "If they wanted us dead, we would be dead. I have no doubt of that.  
No one knows we're here except the Romulan government and these people.  
The same goes for K'Toktehn and Qu'aemon and all the other prisoners here.  
Besides, if they killed us, who would build the compound?"

"If they didn't have prisoners, they wouldn't need a compound," came the  
retort.

Wesley said, "We're all prisoners here, for various reasons."

Imno turned to him bitterly, "You can go home. You aren't supposed to be  
dead." A sudden feeling of foreboding flowed through him. The  
_Enterprise-C_ had been destroyed. According to history, her crew had died  
with honor defending the Klingon outpost at Narendra 3. The selflessness of  
the act had led to the first real breakthroughs in relations with the Klingon  
Empire.

Suddenly, Wes needed to know how it had happened, why they had sacrificed  
everything for the outpost, and why a certain young Lieutenant from over  
twenty years in their future had been on the ship when it had all transpired.

But he didn't know how to ask without sounding as mad as Arrhat.

VVVVV

After that, Wes redoubled his efforts to find time alone with Tasha to find the  
answers. Every half-day off, he tried to make some time to slip out and see  
where she was and what she was doing. Yet, something always prevented him  
from administrative meetings (hers) to impromptu group trips to the swimming  
hole (his) which could not politely be refused. He was willing to settle for  
talking to her with another Human around, but that too seemed impossible. It  
seemed that despite his diverse ideals, Tokath was not keen on the idea of his  
wife associating with others of her kind, especially Castillo. At times, Wes  
would catch her eye, and try to hold her gaze, but she always passed by, not  
knowing. It was frustrating, more so because Wes could feel the time slipping  
from him. Sela had told Captain Picard that she was four when her mother had  
been killed, and she had made no mention of siblings. Sela was four, and  
Tasha's own pregnancy advanced with the relentless pace of all nature. The  
patterns grew smaller and smaller; soon he would be forced to act, no matter the  
consequences. It was with spiral patterns that his mind filled each night as he  
prepared for sleep, narrowing curves leading into times undreamt.

VVVVV

His chance came unexpectedly three months into his stay. It was a half-day,  
Tokath was out with L'Kor inspecting the current status of the building, and the  
others were nowhere to be seen. The general's quarters were of course among  
the first to be built, and the family had moved in the week before. Tasha would  
be there alone with Sela. He hoped for enough time.

Nerves twanging, he pressed the entrance panel, straining to hear the chirp  
inside. There was no response. He tried again, suddenly sure that she was not  
home, that she had gone with Tokath, and that he would have no more chances.  
As he was about to press it again in desperation, the door slid open to reveal a  
very pissed-looking Lieutenant Natasha Yar.

"If you press that button again, I will personally break your fingers off."

"I ... I'm sorry," he stammered. Suddenly, all his plans deserted him in the  
wake of actually seeing her there. Her sunlight-colored hair was pulled back in  
a loose ponytail. Yet, her sea-green eyes were the same, defiant to the end, and  
boring directly into him.

"You obviously never had to get a four-year-old to sleep. What do you want?"  
It was now or never.

"I need to speak with you alone." She sized him up, then slowly opened the  
door to let him inside.

The room was cooler than the hot outdoors, and much darker. As he let his eyes  
adjust, he tried to think of what to say.

"You're Dalek, the minstrel, aren't you?" He nodded, knowing now how to tell  
her.

"Oh yes. I was a traveling musician, you might say. I've been everywhere from  
Romulus to Turkana Four, and have learned songs from all the masters. In fact,  
I learned a tune not so long ago by Darryl Adin himself. Would you care to  
hear a verse?" She paled; it had worked.

"What?" came from her in a small gasp. He tried to take her hand, but she  
pulled away and moved, perhaps unconsciously, into a fighting stance. "Who  
the hell are you?" she demanded in a low voice.

"A friend." He breathed deeply, then Changed back to his normal self. Her  
eyes grew round.

"Oh my god ..."

"Don't be afraid. I don't know exactly what happened in your timeline, but in  
mine, you and I were friends. There is no way I could ever hurt you."

"Who ... who are you?"

"My name is Wesley Crusher." With a strange joy, he saw recognition light in  
her eyes. She knew him!

"But, it's only been five years, and you were seventeen, but you're obviously  
older ... " Suddenly, her legs went out, and he caught her, setting her gently on  
the couch.

"How?"

"In my timeline, there was a man from Tau Alpha C, a Traveler through time  
and space, who told me that I could do what he did. I've been learning for about  
eight years now. This is my 'final exam,' as he put it. I have to rescue you from  
this place."

"Rescue?" She seemed to roll the word in her mouth, tasting its unfamiliar  
sweetness. "Why would you want to rescue me from my home?"

Wes was taken completely off-guard. "Because you need ... Because ... Don't  
you want to go back?"

"Back to what? When I left the Enterprise, my Enterprise, there had been a  
war going on for twenty years. I left one hell on Turkana Four for another, in a  
dying Federation. Here, things are different."

"I'll say."

"You still don't understand. This is a good place, a safe place. Peace is a reality  
here. We're working on plans that could change the galaxy, by showing people  
that Romulans, Klingons and Humans aren't natural enemies. It's an  
experiment, really. Tokath wants to blend the three cultures together, and show  
the Senate that it can be done. And I want to help him." She looked around the  
room, still somewhat chaotic with boxes everywhere, and papers strewn  
carelessly about. "This is my home."

He had not expected this. Happiness at the thought of rescue, fear even, but a  
desire to stay? "After all that they've done to you?"

"What's been done to me?"

"Well," he fumbled with the phrasing, "your marriage, for one thing! Sela for  
another."

She glanced into another room, presumably where Sela slept. "That little girl is  
the most wonderful thing in the universe," she said quietly, her voice filled with  
emotion. "I've had friends, lovers, even a husband, but none of them come close  
to the effect she's had on me. She is everything." She turned back to him.  
"If my marriage to Tokath only ever gave me Sela, I would have considered it  
wonderful beyond imagining."

All the speculations he had made about her life after her capture were quickly  
falling to nothing. His mind had been filled with the horrible notion that she  
had been kidnapped, tortured, then forced to bear some halfbreed brat. Sela had  
never suggested anything else. But there was obviously much more going on  
than any of them could ever have guessed.

"You're in love with him."

Her eyes softened, just a touch. "Yes. Now and then, I think that I might have  
married him anyway." Seeing his expression, she continued. "Despite what  
you might think, he's a good man. I know that he has led attacks on Federation  
and Klingon territory, that he has far more deaths on his soul than anyone has a  
right to own. But he would not let the Romulans kill their prisoners. Instead,  
he offered me the lives of my friends if I would consent to marry him. He could  
just as easily taken me as a personal servant and let the others be executed; I  
couldn't have stopped him. But he let me decide."

"Some decision. 'Marry me or die.' He's a real saint."

"You sound just like Richard. Why can't you understand? Sometimes you  
have to compromise a little to be content."

"The Tasha Yar I knew would never let herself be 'content' with life.  
Sometimes you have to risk to be happy. It isn't even a great risk. We can be  
gone in moments."

"And the other Humans? Surely you weren't planning on just taking me and  
going. Where will you take them? Back to their homes? Or to your time?  
They don't belong in either place. And neither do I."

"Yes you do! You have no idea what it did to us when you ... when our  
Tasha died. It nearly killed the rest of us."

"Obviously it didn't." Suddenly curious, she asked, "how long has it been since  
... she died?"

"Fifteen years."

"Fifteen years." She was lost in thought for a moment. "You get married yet?"

"Not yet. Mom did, though. She married the captain a while back."

A smile. "Always knew they would. Fifteen years ... I've only lived five since  
I came here. Don't you see? I don't belong in your time."

"You don't belong here, either. Maybe I could take you to when you would  
have fit, seven years ago. It wouldn't be more difficult than any other time."

"Do you have any memory of me being brought back seven years ago?"

He paused. "No."

She smiled, with just a trace of pain. "Then you have your answer. I wish it  
could be different."

"So do I." He tried one last time. "What about Richard and the others? Will  
you condemn them to living the rest of their lives here?"

"If they want to go, and if you will take them, let them leave. But I can't go  
with you."

"Don't say that. Think it over for a few days. Please. I can stay for another  
month, even another year, if that's what it takes to convince you to come back  
home."

She glanced downward at her stomach. "In two months at the most, I'll need to  
be somewhere safe for quite a while." She met his eyes. "I couldn't even think  
of leaving for at least another month."

"Why?"

She frowned. "The Romulan Senate is divided on the colony. Some want it to  
be a regular prison camp, others want it stopped completely. They're sending  
someone in a couple of weeks to see what we've done so far. If the senator isn't  
satisfied, the colony will probably be disbanded. Everyone will be either put  
into a real prison, or killed. I can't allow that."

"What part do you play in it?"

"The dutiful wife and mother, of course." Her mouth twisted. "Any problems  
will reflect badly upon the colony. The sudden disappearance of General  
Tokath's wife, not to mention her Human friends, would qualify as a serious  
problem."

"Point taken."

She looked at him oddly. "Unless ... The Romulans would be imprisoned, at  
worst, but the rest of us would be killed. There are seventeen Humans, and  
nearly a hundred Klingons. Could you take us all away?"

He wanted so much to say that he could. "No. It wouldn't be possible. There  
are reasons."

Sadness crossed her features. "Then none of us can leave, at least not until after  
the senator's visit."

"How long will it be?"

"At least a week. Maybe more. That will cut it close."

"Say the visit is over quickly, the review is favorable, and you still haven't gone  
into labor. Then will you at least think about it?"

"I'll think about it. I promise. It would be wonderful to see everyone again."  
Then, in an almost child-like manner, she said, "In my timeline, we were at war  
with the Klingons for twenty years. I lost a lot of good friends, including Dare.  
One of the reasons I went back with the _Enterprise-C_ was to prevent the war  
from ever starting." Her eyes were wide, with hope and fear. "Did we  
succeed?"

War. The picture slid into focus, after years of questions. In the midst of a  
hopeless battle, they had come across a miracle, a rift in the space-time  
continuum just wide enough to slip through and come out in the future bloody  
but unbowed. They had found a Federation at war, and had chosen to return to  
the past and certain death to prevent that war. But for a few, death had not  
come as quickly as they had wished or dreaded. A brave handful had survived,  
despite odds of a million to one against them. Then again, when it came to  
ships named _Enterprise_, million-to-one chances seemed to come through  
relatively often.

"Yes, oh yes, you succeeded." A radiant smile appeared on her face. "We've  
formed an alliance with the Klingon Empire, and both sides are doing just fine.  
And so is Dare, alias the Silver Paladin." He clasped her hands. "You did it."

Suddenly, she hugged him. He awkwardly returned the embrace. "Thank you,"  
she whispered. "Thank you for that. It was worth it." After a moment, she  
pulled back, and he could see the glisten of tears in her eyes. "It was all worth  
it."

VVVVV

He left a few minutes later. When one wanted to stay unnoticed, one did not  
pay undue attention to the General's wife. As he stepped back into the  
oppressive heat and light, he realized that he still had a great deal of time on his  
hands. He wandered back to his quarters, but found no one there except  
K'Toktehn, who was reading a novel in Rihannsu of all things. Wesley smiled  
inwardly. Tasha had been right on one account; the cultures were beginning to  
blend.

K'Toktehn had no idea where the others had gone.

Having literally nothing else to do, Wes went for a walk in the forest, aiming  
vaguely for the swimming hole in hopes that he might find one of his friends.  
Idly, he wondered where Kriana had gone. She had been moody lately, and far  
quieter than was her wont; it was probably due to horomonal changes, but he  
was worried nonetheless. If she was at the swimming hole, he would work on  
cheering her up.

As he walked, he planned his course of attack on Tasha's reluctance to return  
home.

First, he would have to figure out what to do with the crew of the Enterprise-C.  
They could come back to 2379, but it would be a hard adjustment. He could  
also quietly return them to their own time, if they could keep silent about where  
they had been, and how they had returned. That, too, would be difficult for  
them; their families would want to know that they lived, unless they did not go  
back home at all.

The other option would be to find them a nice place of their own, away from  
anyone who might ask questions. Then again, they were not bad off here; the  
gilded cage was a pretty one, and roomy enough, he supposed. He knew  
enough about his own species to see that they would not accept captivity  
forever. It was not in their nature. Besides, Castillo would stay with his crew,  
and Tasha would stay with him. She had followed him across time and space  
once; she would not accept such a separation now. Could he then justify  
bringing all of them with him, just to have Tasha back home?

What to do about the Klingons? They had to stay; Belle's existence proved that  
beyond a doubt. If he began futzing with the timestream to the point of his own  
history changing, he could create a paradox big enough to fly a Galaxy-class  
starship through. It would eventually flatten out; time was fluid, and could  
stand problems of that nature.

Unfortunately, it could wipe out most of the Alpha Quadrant (or the past  
thousand years, take your pick), in the process. As a Pakled might say, that  
would be bad. Paradoxes could be very nasty. What worried him more than he  
would like to think about were the intimations made by the Traveler now and  
again that his very existence hinged on a paradox.

But he would never say what, or why.

The night Catherine had died, the Traveler had taken him to a pool of still water  
in the Tunnels, and shown him the reflected stars. Softly, carefully, he had  
explained the paradox that had cost the woman's life. The child she had birthed  
had a great destiny ahead of him. When the Traveler told Wes what the boy's  
name would be when he went Above, he had simply stared in shock. The  
Traveler might just as well have said that he'd been there for Zephram  
Cochrane's birth, and he would not have been more surprised.

The child's mother had not lived; it was a matter of history, but nor did the man  
who killed her raise the baby. The father needed to know about the boy; the  
man he was to become had a younger half-sister with whom his life was  
intertwined. Two of the greatest leaders in the bad times to come were made  
possible that night, leaders whose actions had shaped the history of the  
Federation to come. The timestream had returned to its course. And Catherine  
was dead.

Now Tasha was part of the paradox: dead but not dead, a prisoner of time and  
her own loyalties. How could he possibly convince her to leave, when she had  
so obviously found a place to be happy? How could he allow her to stay, when  
he knew she would die in less than a year? And what would they do about  
Sela? She was definitely a part of his own history. If the story changed for  
her, if her mother had not been killed, but disappeared instead, things might  
have worked out differently in his own past. There was no danger of deleting  
his own existence; his birth was in a few weeks, and lightyears away. However,  
his universe would be altered, which might have kept him from Travelling,  
which would have kept him from changing things, which would have let the  
universe unfold as it did previously, which meant he would Travel... Again the  
nasty paradox.

The questions began to form spirals in his mind, chasing their own tails with  
maddening frequency, but never catching them. Without his being aware of it,  
he had reached the swimming hole. Coming out of his reverie, he heard  
something in the tangle of jungle just beyond. Carefully, aware that there were  
things in the jungle best left unencountered, he moved aside some brush. And  
froze.

There was a small clearing, perhaps a meter and a half squared, and it was quite  
occupied. Qu'aemon had Arrhat in a firm grip from behind, pinning her arms to  
her sides, as he bit into her neck. Meanwhile, Ekan held her head still as his  
mouth pressed hard against hers. He could not see her face, but heard muffled  
sounds from her throat.

He paused for about two seconds, some rational part of his mind screaming that  
he had no chance against either a Klingon or a Romulan in a fight and what in  
the name of Kolker was he doing about to take on both??? Another voice, not  
as loud, but far more powerful, said simply: "Would you stand by if this pair  
tried to rape Robin?"

The two seconds passed; he marched into the clearing. He grabbed Qu'aemon  
from behind, and when the Klingon brought his face around, decked him solidly  
on the jaw. He dropped Arrhat and fell back, looking dazed. Ekan instantly  
moved into fighting stance, as Qu'aemon recovered. Wes ran everything he  
knew about hand-to-hand combat through his brain. There wasn't much. With  
a silent plea to whatever guardian angel had watched over him thus far, he  
prepared to be pulverized, but not without doing as much damage as he could.

"Run!" he shouted to Arrhat, hoping that she would have enough sense to get  
help.

She looked back at him, trembling. The shaking grew, and he realized that she  
was laughing. In moments, tears were streaming down her face from her mirth.  
Wes surrendered whatever hope he'd held for reinforcements. He turned back  
to Ekan, who had eased down, and seemed on the verge of laughter himself.

"This is rich," whispered Arrhat between gasps for breath. "I always wondered  
when you were gonna beat up these two losers." For the second time, she spoke  
Standard.

Qu'aemon began to smile. "It is kind of funny."

Wes felt lost. "What the hell is going on?!"

Arrhat calmed down enough to place a hand against his face. "I know what you  
were trying to do, and it's sweet. But the boys are no threat."

"But he had you, and he was ... and you were ... Oh." Understanding hit him  
square in the forehead. He glanced around at the ground for a convenient hole  
to drop into. "Um. I'll just go now."

"Don't," said Arrhat, with a glance at the others. "I knew you would find out  
eventually. I just didn't know I would have to tell you now."

"Tell me what?"

"Well, for starters, that these two twits are my husbands."

"Husbands?" Everything was spinning now. There was something important,  
something he had to remember about her. Her eyes. It almost made sense.  
Still, the small voice of reason, rather miffed that it had been ignored to date,  
chimed in with a reminder that, up till this point, Arrhat had demonstrated all  
the mental stability of a ferret on amphetamines.

The two men took her hands, and stood beside her protectively.

Qu'aemon said, "Our 'marriage' is not exactly legal where I come from, and not  
especially favored by our families. But I for one figured that since they don't  
have to put up with her snoring or his talking in his sleep..."

"My snoring?"

"You both could wake the dead." Ekan shook his head sadly.

Wes thought for a moment. "But Arrhat, you came with our group. And you  
have not had that much free time."

She smiled oddly. "Time? I have all the time in the universe, Wesley." He  
stifled a gasp. How could she know? "Don't be alarmed. I've known who you  
were since we met aboard the ship." She glanced fondly at her companions.  
And Changed.

VVVVV  
Chapter 5: T'Riest and Traveler

Arrhat stood before him as a Human woman.

She wore a uniform that looked vaguely Starfleet-issue; it had the same  
form-fitting style, but the top was solid cranberry save for a thin black seam  
around the shoulders, and it was solid black from the midriff down. Her dark  
hair was held in a bun at the back of her long neck. She was nearly his height,  
and carried it proudly, her bearing that of someone who knew precisely who and  
what she was and damn anyone who thought different. Her oval face, filled  
with secrets, seemed familiar, like someone he might have seen in an old  
photograph once and then forgotten.

Her eyes were her most remarkable feature, with depths he had not thought  
possible. They were the color of a stray piece of sky caught between two clouds  
near the edge of the horizon some Spring afternoon, and they reached inside  
him. There were aspects of every woman he had ever known in that glance:  
strength, wisdom, experience, and the faintest air of sadness underlying all the  
rest. Now he understood why he could not pin down a distinct color for them; a  
Traveler might hold another form for months, but the eyes remained mirrors of  
all the universes ever known.

"Now do you understand?" Her normal voice was not much different from her  
Romulan voice; other than the intonations, she could still have been speaking  
Romulan.

"I think so," he said, uncertain but learning. He turned to the males. "What  
about you?"

Qu'aemon Changed into a humanoid male, about two meters tall, with  
golden-hued hair and greenish-blue eyes. He looked like an average Human  
man, although he too seemed familiar. Compared to his Klingon persona, his  
new form was almost weak-looking. Almost. Wes noticed uncomfortably that  
a bruise was forming on the other man's jaw.

"Ummm... Sorry about that."

"S'okay. If I saw what you saw, I probably would have hit me, too."

"As would I," said Ekan. He turned to Qu'aemon, or whoever he was, and  
grinned. "Hit you, that is." Ekan, Wes noticed, had not Changed.

Qu'aemon was about to respond when Arrhat cut him off with a look. It was  
obvious who was the CPU in the family computer.

"So you three just Travel together?" Now there was a useful question, surely  
to be marked down on stone pillars for all the universe to read in awe. Chalk  
another one up to Wesley Crusher, prodigy and general expert on idiotic small  
talk. Oh boy.

"Actually, it's the four of us," explained Qu'aemon. "We have another wife,  
but Dell doesn't Travel much with us." Another wife?

"Ah ... " He sighed; this was getting him nowhere. "What are you doing here?  
I was sent, I thought, to rescue Tasha and the other Humans, and set some  
paradox right. But I don't know any more, and I'm getting confused."

Arrhat looked away, as if conducting an internal debate with two people who  
barely tolerated one another. Of course, the little voice of wisdom whispered,  
Josolar thinks she has multiple- personality syndrome, remember? Then, she  
returned his gaze.

"You are here to correct the paradox, but first you need to set it into motion."

"Huh?"

"Please don't ask me. I can't tell you what will happen. You must understand."

"How will I know when the time is right? Tasha doesn't even want to come  
with me," he said, a sudden feeling of despondency settling upon him.

"You will know," said Ekan. "When there are no more choices to be made,  
your path will be the only one you can take."

Wes nodded, not because he understood but because it seemed the right thing to  
do at the time. "Who are you really? I only know your assumed names."

"It would be easier on you if you did not know our real names, so that you don't  
accidently slip," said Arrhat. "Besides," she smiled, "I've already told you my  
real name, Wesley."

He racked his brains. "T'Riest?"

Arrhat only laughed, then Changed back into her Romulan form. How easy it  
seemed for her! She whispered, "Does it really matter anymore what my name  
is? For now, I am Arrhat the mad thief from Romulus. When we visit Dell, her  
family knows me as Ami. I have been called Marivic and Kavata and T'Riest  
and Morag and Aileen and Piera and Yibeli and Arkady and Brooke and  
Valkris. I am the maker of timelines and the guardian of young children. I have  
been a musician, a poet, a biochemist, a Starfleet Academy cadet, a philosopher,  
and a professional duelist. I have played Ophelia before the last Queen of  
England, and sung "The Lady of the Blue Ship" in a Bajoran settlement camp.

"I was present for the discovery of the Medici Stars, for a concert in the Tunnels  
beneath Old New York, and for your birth. I have met four presidents of the  
Federation, and sixteen people claiming to be the one true prophet sent from  
God. I've had lunch with H.G. Wells, debated physics with Zephram Cochrane,  
painted with Cool "Disco" Dan, and sung lullabies to Surak. I have seen the  
iceberg that sunk the _Titanic_, the assassination of Chancellor Gorkon, and the  
sunset on Kataan. I turned twenty-eight a week before we met on the ship."

Wesley tried to think of something profound to say in response.

"Oh."

He turned to the men. Qu'aemon yawned with a great deal of exaggeration.

"Well that was overdone, dear. Are you sure that you aren't related to his  
grandfather?" He jerked his thumb towards Ekan.

"Shut up, dear," the other two said in unison. Wes felt the situation slipping  
away from him.

"What about you?" he asked Ekan.

"I am ... " he paused. He tilted his head in a manner that reminded Wes of  
someone else he had once known well. "I am."

Wes sighed. At least Arrhat had married the right guy.

VVVVV

The compound was unnaturally quiet when they finally returned. Dinner had  
not yet started, nor were there any ceremonies scheduled until after dark, yet no  
one was in the courtyard. The four of them split up to search. Wes went to the  
infirmary, thinking to find Josolar.

The outer door was unlocked, but no one was in the room. Since he was  
already there, he checked on the snake. Its vitals had been improving steadily.  
Josolar had even finally given the thing a name: Sunoph'l'pighis, which as near  
as Wes could  
translate, was equivalent to "Spot." There were times he worried about his  
friends.

From across the room, the raptor screamed for freedom. The bird, red-golden in  
color with bright yellow eyes, had been captured at the founding of the colony.  
Mirith officially had the care of it, but in reality everyone in the camp had a  
small stake invested in the creature. It had no name, and was merely referred to  
as "the large avian." Blood-lust was in its eye; it wanted the snake badly, and as  
far as most of the colonists were concerned, it could have the creature.

Wes watched the snake for several minutes. Its half-lidded eyes stared into  
nothing. Only the occasional darting of its tongue betrayed that it lived. The  
cage, a transparent aluminum box with a grating at the top, took up nearly the  
entire wall, giving the snake more than enough room to stretch out. Josolar had  
even brought in some small plants from the outdoors to provide scenery, and  
fed his little pet with the finest replicated food he could, a greenish paste that  
looked rather revolting. From what they could determine, its natural diet  
consisted mainly of rodents, and occasionally larger animals when frightened,  
but Josolar refused to feed it anything living. The snake did not seem to care  
much either way. The long body, nearly five feet in length and tapering to a  
sliver at the tail, remained motionless, waiting quietly for whatever fate or the  
good doctor might bring it. Given a choice, it might have slithered directly into  
the bird's cage.  
"It'll be okay, big fella. I'll make sure you can go home, too." But he had no  
idea how.

VVVVV

He finally caught up with the rest of his Romulan friends at dinner.  
Conversation was minimal. Wes certainly couldn't relate how his day had gone  
to the others, and no one else seemed to be in a chatty mood. Even Arrhat  
seemed sullen, only giving him the briefest of nods when he caught her glance.  
He wondered if she was embarrassed at being caught in the act, as it were. So  
far, he had never been exposed as a Traveler, although ...

He sat straight up, nearly knocking his tray off the table.

"Are you all right?" asked Trehan, looking concerned. Qu'aemon, sitting  
across the table, glared at him intently.

"Ummm, yeah. Just had a sudden thought is all." The Romulans, the real  
Romulans, looked at him expectantly, while the Travelers tried not to look too  
concerned. "This place would look much better with drapes."

Ekan placed a friendly, and very firm, hand on his shoulder. "You have been  
hanging out with Arrhat for far too long a time."

"I represent that remark," said Arrhat, meticulously sculpting her dinner into a  
grotesque statue. The small talk slipped into another topic, but Wesley tuned it  
out. She had known his name, and she had known that he would discover  
her. But how? Because someone had told her. The Traveler. He seemed to  
know things about Wes before he did. He had known when Wes accidentally  
set his mother into her own private universe, and come to help. He had known  
when life was getting just too damned low at the Academy, had known where to  
be when he came to Darvon V. Arrhat, whoever she was, knew when to be  
caught by the Romulan authorities in order to be brought here. He had been  
captured by being utterly unprepared. He could use some prescience right about  
now.

Josolar's voice startled him. "Are you sure that you are feeling well? You've  
barely eaten." He tried to think of something, but Kriana saved him.

"Small wonder. This ... stuff resembles what you're feeding that snake of  
yours."

Imno, at the end of the table, put a bite into his mouth and made a face. "That  
sure explains a lot." K'Toktehn laughed to himself, which brought more than  
one stare from the others.

Sure enough, as Wes looked down at his mostly-ignored dinner, it looked like  
the dietary supplement for the needle-snake. He felt ill.

"You know, I am feeling a little under the weather. I think I'll turn in early."  
Without another word, he left.

As he went, he passed Tokath's table. Tasha was laughing at something her  
husband had just said. She looked so peaceful. How could he ever think of  
taking her away from this life? Then he looked at her tray. The food was the  
same grey-green mash that he had barely eaten. Snake food. He hurried out  
and back to the safety of his quarters, where he quickly fell asleep.

VVVVV

He stood in a large transparent aluminum box in Ten-Forward. A crib sat inside  
the box with him. When he looked in, he found a baby, no more than a few  
weeks old, staring up silently at him. He noticed small points on the child's tiny  
ears. He knew that the baby was his responsibility, that he had to escape the  
box with it, but he could not Travel out of it with another person yet. He didn't  
know how.

On the other side of the box, all his friends from the _Enterprise_ were gathered  
for his mother's wedding to the Captain. He tried to call to them, tell them that  
he was there, but no one heard him. Then, out of nowhere, a boy of about  
seventeen or eighteen appeared in the box with him. He had neatly cut brown  
hair, and bright hazel eyes. In the way of dreaming, he knew it was Jacky, even  
though the bride at the wedding had a conspicuous bulge in her dress uniform, a  
bulge that would form into his little brother.

"You look like a man with a problem."

"I need to get out. I'm supposed to be best man." He pointed to the crib. "We  
both need to get out."

"Then just walk through it." He demonstrated. Wesley picked up the baby, and  
tried to follow.

"I can't get through." Jack shook his head sadly, and then Robin stood outside  
of the cage beside him.

"Then you'll have to fly out, but you must hurry, for you haven't much time  
left," she said, and laughed, and as she laughed, her features became waxy and  
pale. Like water, her skin began to run, until it formed into another form.  
Arrhat.

"I have all the time in the universe, Wesley. But you don't. Not anymore."  
Then, she moved up beside the box, and whispered, "I'll tell you a secret about  
the box: the only way to get out is to go in."

In the dream, it made perfect sense. "What about the baby?"

"Leave her. Fate will guard her."

"No!" He held the infant close against his shoulder. Suddenly, a sharp pain  
shot through him. He pulled the child away, and saw a row of sharp teeth  
covered with his own emerald-colored blood. As he stood frozen, he saw a  
forked tongue slither out of her mouth, and lick the blood from her lips.

He woke screaming. When the others had finally quieted him down, Josolar  
looked at his shoulder. Small symmetric scars like teeth-marks dotted the skin,  
an angry, bloodless green.

Wesley did not sleep the rest of the night.

VVVVV  
(to be continued)


	2. Default Chapter

Disclaiming we will go. Disclaiming we will go. Heigh-ho the dairy-o, disclaiming we will go.  
Paramount takes the Trek. Paramount takes the Trek. Heigh-ho the dairy-o, don't sue me for  
this dreck.

VVVVV  
Chapter 6: Artful Dodgers and Paper Flowers

Morning came, and everyone went back to work. Wesley's focus had changed.  
He had to think of some way to get Tasha and the other Humans out of the  
camp without changing the past as he knew it. As he carried blocks back to the  
compound, he made and abandoned half a dozen plans. Some would need to  
wait until after Tasha's baby was born, which might be too late. Others  
involved changing the flow of the timestream far too much. He even toyed with  
the idea of ridding the Federation of a certain Romulan Commander before she  
could help start the Klingon Civil War, among other things. Now there  
would be an interesting future.

At lunch, he made sure to sit at a table where he could make eye contact with  
Tasha several times during the course of the meal. She glanced back at him  
twice, but affected to ignore him the rest of the time. It was probably safer that  
way.

The rest of the day passed quickly. After dinner, everyone gathered in the  
courtyard. Tokath stepped upon the dais, while Wesley inched towards the  
front to stand near Tasha.

"My friends, I have some news to relate. It seems that there are those in the  
Senate who do not appreciate our efforts here. They will be sending a  
representative to see our progress. If she is satisfied, our colony will be allowed  
to remain here  
permanently." There were a few cheers. "However, if she does not like what  
we have created, if she thinks the needs of the Romulan people will be better  
satisfied by a prison camp, then the colony will be abandoned, and all of you  
will return to Romulus." He paused, then, in a softer voice: "If that happens, I  
will no longer be able to protect you."

He glanced at Tasha, who stood drawn in tight against herself beside him. He  
raised his voice again. "Therefore, we will have this colony in perfect running  
order by the time of the Senator's visit. We have three weeks to finish the  
compound." He held up a diagram, filled with intimidating marks and figures.

"The final structure is almost complete now; L'Kor assures me that if we  
eliminate the free half-day, and if everyone puts in two hours more each day,  
then we can have everything in order by the time the Senator arrives." Voices  
began murmuring; this was not going over particularly well.

"Also, there has been a suggestion to hold a small celebration when the Senator  
arrives. Anyone who is interested should contact Kriana, who has graciously  
volunteered to be in charge. I happen to think it is a good idea. If the Senator  
sees how hard we have worked, and sees how happy we are, then she will surely  
allow us to continue our work here." This elicited a few more cheers than  
before, and he stepped down.

Imno, his face dark, turned to Kriana. "Have you lost your Romulan mind?"  
He shrugged off a steadying hand from K'Toktehn. "We have to work longer  
days with no rest to finish our own prison, and then you want us to make a  
carnival so that some Rom bitch thinks that we're happy little convicts? I don't  
think so." He was becoming loud; if he gathered enough steam, he could incite  
a small riot.

Wes stepped between them. "We all have to work the extra hours, Dodge, not  
just you. We'll manage."

"You'll manage, Romulan. I've had enough." He jumped onto the dais to  
address the assembly in general and the General in particular: "Why did you  
bring us here? Why didn't you let us die with our ship? We're sick of this  
place, sick of living at your leisure."

"Are you sick of living?" came a voice from the crowd. It might have been  
Qu'aemon's, but Wes couldn't be sure. Imno didn't hear it anyway.

"And you." He faced Tasha. "Why didn't you stay back on your _Enterprise_  
in your time where you belonged? If you weren't with us, he would have  
killed us long ago." His voice broke. "We could have died with some dignity.  
We don't belong here. We want to go home." The rumblings started earlier had  
increased to a disturbing volume, and most of them sounded Klingon. The  
Humans weren't the only strangers in this strange land. Of course, at least some  
of the Humans were far stranger than any of the others could have dreamed.

Imno turned to face Tokath directly. "You have no concept of what I can do. If  
I chose to, I could ... "

He never finished.

One of the guards drew his disruptor and fired. Before anyone could react,  
Imno was converted to pure energy, and was gone on a breath of wind.

For a few echoing moments, everything went motionless. Wes had the oddest  
feeling that time had stopped, a situation with which he was well-accustomed.  
Then someone gasped, and someone else screamed, and a roar went up from the  
mob.

Tokath spun on the guard.

"How dare you!" he bellowed. "Explain!"

The guard, who had obviously expected something more along the lines of  
"Good job, soldier," was at a loss. He sputtered, "General, he was inciting a  
riot. The prisoners might have revolted. I thought he was dangerous."

"You 'thought?'" Tokath sneered. "You didn't think. You acted without  
considering the consequences." He gestured towards the crowd, which by this  
time had begun to focus on the guard menacingly.

"But General!"

"If we were aboard my ship, I would kill you where you stand. You will leave  
on the next transport. Give me your weapon." He held out his hand. Defeated,  
the guard handed it over. Two of the other guards seized him.

Tokath placed the disruptor on the dais for all to see, then spoke in a quiet tone  
that demanded attention.

"I am deeply sorry for this unfortunate incident." He took in a ragged breath. "I  
do not condone the guard's actions. He will be dealt with appropriately, I assure  
you. I do not take the death of anyone lightly. That is why all of you are still  
alive. Please do not take the actions of a foolish man to be the attitude of the  
rest of us." He drew his own disruptor and obliterated the murder weapon. "No  
more blood." He stepped down again, and took Tasha's arm. She stared at him  
without recognition, then at the dais.

"Please say that we'll tear down that wretched thing," she whispered.

"After the Senator goes away. I promise you." He led her away, but she looked  
back to Wesley for the briefest moment. Then they were gone.

Arrhat climbed up on the dais, and stared down at where Imno had been  
standing minutes before. Ekan joined her, took her hand as she whispered: "It  
seems the Artful Dodger found an ending to his story after all." When she  
started to cry, Ekan held her, and wept a little, too.

VVVVV

Castillo changed room assignments that night, choosing to crowd into a room  
of mostly Human prisoners. It was just as well; living quarters would change as  
soon as the compound was complete. He left with barely a word.

K'Toktehn was more distant than ever, while even Qu'aemon was in a less than  
sociable mood. When Arrhat tried to take his hand, Wes noticed that he pulled  
away sharply. Twice. Obviously, he was trying to keep in his Klingon persona,  
which Arrhat had to have known, but she still looked genuinely hurt. On an  
impulse, Wes hugged her as she and Kriana left. She didn't even smile.

After Castillo and the women were gone, the room seemed very cold and  
empty. None of the men wanted to look towards the empty bunk just yet. They  
readied for sleep in silence, and Wes soon lay in his bunk staring at the ceiling.

Tokath had managed the situation well. He had dealt with the guard quickly,  
before the mob could react. Assuming he could keep them at bay until the  
transport arrived, tempers could return to their more typical level of only  
slightly above normal. Normally, they were the temperature of an average city  
sidewalk on Vulcan in midsummer. Wes had taken note how Tokath had  
studiously avoided the use of the word murder. Also, that bit about the one  
foolish man speaking for the group had not only been about the guard. Just  
because Imno had been outspoken, the rest of them would not be held  
responsible. However, if the others should begin to take his example, they  
too would be dealt with. Quickly.

VVVVV

Night passed, and morning followed. The day brought a distinct cooling to  
relations among the prisoner-colonists. Several times during the day, Wesley  
walked by a group of conversing Humans, only to notice the sudden silence as  
he passed. The Klingons never spoke much during work in the best of  
circumstances, so their silence was not quite as obvious. Nevertheless, the  
atmosphere of the entire work detail was as solemn as a funeral party, which  
indeed it was.

Despite the quiet, or maybe because of it, the work in the quarry proceeded  
quickly. That day, and into the next week, the final construction of the  
compound went faster than anyone had thought possible.

Three days before the scheduled arrival of the Senator, the compound was  
complete. Completely ringed with a sandstone wall, filled with quarters for all  
the colonists, the structure was breathtaking. The barbed wire was gone, and  
the wooden planks had been converted into firewood for the central fireplace.  
Nothing remained of the original structure but the wooden dais in the center of  
the courtyard, which would stay until after the Senator's visit. On the same  
note, though, no one was sure if the colonists would still be there after the  
Senator's visit. Tokath maintained a positive attitude, even going to the quarries  
with the others to help carve the final stones. It was a gesture, of course, but a  
good one in terms of public relations.

When the last stone, a block at the top of the perimeter wall, was set, everyone  
was present. Ekan spread the mortar, then Trehan and K'Toktehn set it in place.  
A sigh spread through the crowd like a cool breeze, and for a brief moment,  
they stopped being Klingons and Humans and Romulans, and became people.  
There was a general back-slapping and hand- shaking that lasted several  
minutes.

Wesley found himself beside Tasha, and quickly hugged her. There seemed to  
be more of her than there had been a week and a half before.

He breathed into her ear. "How long?"

"We might have a month left. Maybe less."

"You'll have to tell Castillo the whole story. He doesn't trust me anymore."

"All right. Move away now."

He casually pulled away and slapped the nearest Klingon companionably on the  
back. The large bulk turned around. It was K'Toktehn.

"What?" he snarled. Wes jumped back.

"Just congratulating you is all." He suddenly realized that the brief spell of  
good-naturedness had passed, and people were again moving into their own  
cliques. A look at the Klingon's face made his stomach shrink into a tight knot.  
Imno had been his friend, the only real friend he had. Not even Qu'aemon had  
made him laugh. Imno was dead, a Romulan had killed him, and the Klingon  
had not yet allowed himself to grieve.

Wesley suddenly felt that he was in big trouble.

K'Toktehn moved towards him, and he backstepped quickly, almost running  
into Tasha. The expression on her face was clear: If Tokath sees us together,  
we both die. Deal with it.

"Listen, K'Toktehn, let's pretend we're friends, okay?"

"What would a Romulan know of friendship with a Klingon," he demanded,  
"when Romulans go killing with impunity?" It was the longest sentence Wesley  
had ever heard the Klingon utter. That fact did not have much time to register,  
as it was followed by a very heavy-looking fist.

Wes ducked to one side, catching the blow on his shoulder. He staggered  
slightly, tried to form some plan of attack, or at least escape. He wasn't nearly  
strong enough to fight a Klingon male in his prime; as a means of suicide, a  
poisoned dagger would be less messy, and certainly less painful.

The fist lashed out again, and again he avoided it. This wasn't going to work for  
long.

K'Toktehn drew back again, and having no time for a better idea, Wes caught  
the fist, pulled it through and over his shoulder. In moments, K'Toktehn was  
staring in some wonder at the clouds.

As he tried to rise, several guards surrounded them both, weapons ready.  
Tokath stepped in.

"What is going on here?"

K'Toktehn spat. "Typical Romulan." He looked to Wes disdainfully. "You  
have no honor, bringing them into this."

If there was one thing Wes could do, it was think on his feet. "Sorry, sir. My  
friend here had mentioned a Klingon martial art form, 'muck barrow' or  
something. I asked him to demonstrate, and I guess things just got out of hand."

Tokath looked at him as though he had sprouted another limb. He glanced at  
Tasha for confirmation of the story.

"I certainly learned a lot," was all she would say.

Tokath drew a deep sigh from somewhere within. "There will be no more  
'demonstrations.' Is that understood?"

K'Toktehn, who had pulled himself to a sitting position, nodded solemnly. Wes  
added, "Yes, General."

"Good. We cannot allow fighting among us, especially with the Senator's  
arrival coming so soon. Too much depends on it." He motioned the guards  
away. "Come, my dear." He offered an arm for Tasha.

"I think I'll walk around a while. The sunlight and fresh air will do me good."  
She offered him a smile, but it was a plastic mask, thin and quickly removed  
after he left.

Wes held out a hand for K'Toktehn, but he ignored it and rose on his own. "We  
will have another 'demonstration' later, Romulan." He did not smile as he  
moved away.

"For someone trying to stay out of sight, you certainly seem to draw attention to  
yourself." Tasha shook her head. "How's the shoulder?"

"Don't ask." The dull throb had the all too familiar tingle of a pain that would  
linger. He couldn't even ask Josolar for a pain reliever; Romulan drugs could  
kill a Traveler as easily as a Human.

"Duck better next time." She stood back, appraising him for a moment.

"What?"

"Nothing." She paused. "It's just that the Wesley I knew would never have  
even dreamed of fighting a Klingon, and certainly couldn't have beaten one.  
Hell, I don't know that I could have done it, even when I was training every  
day. I get the feeling you won't be having problems from any of the others."

She was right; no Human in his or her right (or left) mind would fight a  
Klingon, and the list of winners in such confrontations could probably be  
counted on the fingers of one thumb. Something was amiss, but he was damned  
if he could figure out what it was.

"I'll tell him tonight," she said, and wandered off in a carefully casual manner.  
He didn't watch her leave.

"Dalek!" He heard a shout off to his left. "Dalek!" He wondered why Dalek  
hadn't answered. People should answer when people called their names.  
Names. His name was supposed to be Dalek.

"Yes?" he responded, trying not to look like an idiot.

Trehan caught up with him, for once with none of the others in tow. "Did I see  
what I think I just saw?"

"It depends. What did you see that you think that you saw that you might not  
have seen?" He grinned; three months ago, a sentence like that would have  
been beyond his linguistic skills. Then again, from the expression on Trehan's  
face, it might still be beyond him. Wes had the sudden feeling he had just asked  
him something about avocados.

"Maybe he managed to get you after all. What in space made you pick a fight  
with K'Toktehn??! Hasn't anybody ever explained the hazards to your health?"

"You sound like Josolar. You two spend far too much time together." It was a  
weak attempt to change the topic.

"Dalek. You can't just think with your fists. You have to think things through.  
Now K'Toktehn's never gonna come around." He muttered something about  
fools and their heads being soon parted. Still, there was something in his glance  
akin to respect now. Not much, for Trehan had his own ideas of what  
warranted admiration, but some.

That evening, Wes noticed people staring at him, and whispering. Klingons and  
Romulans alike who had pushed by him without much thought now stood at a  
distance and watched him go by. He had become either a hero or a target. So  
much for remaining the unassuming minstrel.

VVVVV

With the final construction of the compound finished, the barracks became  
unnecessary. There were quarters available now, if one chose to double or  
triple up. For the time being, Wes had a room with Trehan and Josolar, with  
Ekan, Qu'aemon and K'Toktehn next door. Kriana and Arrhat had managed to  
get a room on the other side with just the two of them, although there would be  
three soon enough.

The loss of the large room also brought the loss of something else. Even with  
the new free time, officially spent in planning the final details of the Senator's  
visit, the whole group was rarely together. More and more, Trehan and/or  
Josolar would be with Kriana, while Arrhat spent time with her husbands. Wes  
wondered how long it would be until they requested family quarters. Maybe  
they would just kick K'Toktehn out. That was sure to put him in a good mood.

His friends otherwise occupied, Wesley turned his thoughts to escape. Imno's  
death left sixteen people to go Travelling with him. It would have to be  
quickly, before anyone noticed that the Human population was dwindling at  
warp speed. The carnival gave him an idea for a back-up plan, at least.

Late one night, Wes lay half-asleep when he heard a tapping at the door.  
Blearily, he crawled out of bed and answered it; the soft snoring from the others'  
beds did not change from their rhythm in the slightest.

"Yes?" he whispered, trying not to waken them.

"Dalek?" came the whisper from the other side.

"Yeah?"

"It's Castillo. Can you come out?" His pulse jumped. Tasha had gotten the  
message through. He slipped outside.

Castillo stood shivering in the cool moonlight. He looked nothing of the  
man who had led his ship in a hopeless defense for a lost Klingon outpost. The  
night-wind robbed his heroism, left him kin to the timid animal who was his  
ancestor, who had huddled near a fire against the terrors in the darkness when  
time was what passed between dusk and day. The same blood that coursed  
through Castillo's veins passed through Wesley's, and through every other  
Human from that crisp night onwards. The shared aloneness drew them all  
together. There was no way that Wes could leave him here.

"Can you come back to our quarters? There's something we need to discuss."  
He nodded, and Castillo led him along the passage to his own quarters.

When his eyes adjusted to the light, Wes saw something amazing: a room filled  
with Humans. It had been so long that the entire time he was there, he kept  
looking for pointed ears and bumpy foreheads. There were fifteen of them,  
including Castillo, and not an alien among them. If Tokath ever caught wind of  
this meeting ... Then he saw the fear in their eyes. He was the Romulan, the  
alien. He was the enemy.

"You all know Dalek, I believe." A few nods, the fear remained.

"It's okay," he said, trying to reassure himself as much as anyone. "I'm a friend.  
My name is Wesley Crusher." There was little response. Obviously his  
alternate self had not made an impression on them. Or had never met them.

A woman near the back asked: "As in Doctor Crusher?" He nodded, and she  
explained to the others. "She was the doctor aboard the _Enterprise-D_." More  
recognition now. At least they knew of his mother. Perhaps Tasha had told  
them about the _E-D_.

He decided the direct approach would be the best. He stepped apart from  
Castillo, took a deep breath, and Changed back to his normal form. Several of  
the Humans gasped, and one crossed himself.

"I've come from the future to rescue you." There. It was done, for good or ill.  
He could not turn back now. Suddenly, the silent group came alive with  
questions.

"How did you do that?"

"When are we going?"

"Are you Human?"

"How do we know you're not a Romulan spy?"

"Rescue ... "

"Home ... "

Castillo silenced them with a quick gesture. "Do you want to wake everyone  
up? He's here, and Tasha trusts him. That's enough for me." He looked at Wes  
expectantly, eyes filled with faith. Tasha trusted him, therefore Castillo trusted  
him. That was love. The simplicity of it awed him.

Wes faced the little group.

"You have spent a long time here, too long. I'm going to ask you to do  
something very difficult, and wait a little longer. I can't tell you how important  
it is that this colony continue. If the Senator finds anything amiss, like all of us  
gone, there is no way she'll let this place stand."

"So?" asked someone who sounded eerily like Imno. "What do we care what  
happens to a bunch of Romulans after we leave?"

"The Klingons are in this, too."

"Last time we were in the future, the Federation was at war with the Klingons."

"You prevented the war. The Klingons are our friends, and the ones from this  
colony are very important to future events." Or at least to my future events,  
he added to himself.

"Where will we go?" asked someone else. "How do we set things right without  
messing up the future? We're not supposed to be here."

"You'll have some time to decide that. The Senator arrives the day after  
tomorrow. We all have to be on our best behavior. She'll be here about a week.  
Once she's had a chance to give her report to the Senate, we leave. Say, two  
weeks from tonight. By then, you'll have to choose whether you want to return  
to your time or to mine. I'll tell you now: you can't go back home." The voices  
murmured. "If you do, it will disrupt the timestream. I can't allow that."

Before there could be a large disagreement, he turned to Castillo. "You know  
where the swimming hole is." He nodded. "There is a clearing just behind the  
bushes there that should hold all of us if we squeeze. Over the next two weeks,  
everyone should familiarize themselves with the place. We leave at midnight.  
Whatever happens, don't be late." He did not need to tell them what would  
happen when they were discovered missing. Anyone left would be executed.

In silence, the others dispersed a few at a time, until the only ones left were  
Castillo, his roommates, and Wes. The other two men went to bed, leaving the  
pair alone.

"She's told me about you," said Castillo suddenly. "Before we came here, the  
whole lot of us were interned together on Romulus. We numbered thirty-eight  
back then. We would be taken one by one and 'interrogated' for hours at a time.  
Nineteen of my people died as a result of the questioning. When we weren't  
being questioned, we were in a large cell somewhere in the bowels of the  
Romulan military headquarters. It was always dark, and it stank, and there were  
rats, or something like rats, crawling over everything.

"Sometimes, the only thing that kept me sane was Tasha. She'd tell us stories of  
the future, about places she'd been and people she'd known. She told us about  
her friends on her _Enterprise_, everything she knew, over and again. Your  
mother was her best friend, and Tasha would tell us the stories she had learned  
about your family. She never really had one, so maybe it was the next best  
thing. I close my eyes every night, and I can hear her voice telling me about  
your first steps and I can feel a rat run across my hand.

"When the interrogations were finished, we were going to be executed. Then  
Tokath stepped in. He had not been involved with us until that day. He saw  
Tasha, filthy, dressed in the smelly remnant of a uniform that hadn't been  
designed yet, and he fell in love with her like that. He loved her in the  
daylight, and I loved a voice from the darkness and we understood one another  
completely. He cut a deal, letting all of us live if she would be his. She didn't  
hesitate. They took her out of the cell, and I didn't see her again for nearly a  
year. When we came here, I saw her at a distance, and all I could see was the  
fierce woman of the ship from the future, and all I could hear was the voice  
from the darkness telling me about people we would never see again."

He caught Wesley's gaze and held it. "There are things that bind people far  
deeper than blood ties. You and I and Tasha and Tokath are bound." He seized  
Wes's shoulders with a half-mad look in his eyes. "You must promise me that  
you will protect her, no matter what."

Had it been daylight, had they been on a starship and among friends, Wes would  
have laughed off Castillo's fears and told him that Tasha was far more capable  
of taking care of herself than anyone he had ever known. The night was cold,  
though, and filled with distant stars in unfamiliar constellations and the  
dimming greenish light of a dying moon, and night-fears were more real than  
daylight when all there was between life and the darkness was the flickering of  
a fire and the popping manta leaves.

"Castillo ... " Sela had been so certain, and she and Belle had never mentioned  
one another. Tasha had been dead for fifteen years, and also for thirty years,  
and there wasn't a thing he could do to change the timestream. But she trusted  
him and this soul- wounded man trusted him. "I promise." The madness faded,  
and Castillo became himself again.

Without a word, Wes Changed back to his Romulan form, and slipped back to  
his quarters silently. With the blankets securely around him, he tried to make  
himself believe that the smoke in his nostrils was only his imagination.

VVVVV

The Senator was scheduled to arrive just past mid-day, in order to have a  
proper daylight tour of the place before dinner. The meal was to be an  
extravagant affair with traditional Romulan, Klingon, and Human dishes  
prepared by the colonists.

Trehan had made five batches of breadcakes from his family's "secret recipe."  
Wes, bothering him in the kitchen, was allowed to sample one and knew  
immediately why no one had ever bothered to steal the secret.

One of the Klingons, a woman named Gi'ral, had decided to make a real treat  
for the Senator. Without telling a soul, she had crept outside night after night  
gathering ingredients. The day of the feast, she had finally told her friends about  
the dish she planned. In the way of all small communities with too much time  
on their hands, the rumor reached Tokath within an hour. His face took on a  
pained look. He went to find her, and spent a great deal of time explaining why  
gagh was not the best thing to serve to a member of the Romulan Senate when  
trying to impress her. According to the story Wesley heard that afternoon, this  
"discussion" culminated with Tokath consuming the worms himself, praising  
them all the way down and excusing himself quickly afterwards.

The General did not attend the noon meal.

Through the afternoon, decorations hurriedly fashioned in the past two days  
were plastered to the bricks like paint. Dried flowers and fresh were strung  
from the central building to the edge of the compound on slender wires as a  
papery display in blue and red and orange. Every movement of the humid air  
drifted the exotic scents lower to where the people busied themselves, and now  
and again some of the petals would come loose and settle to the dusty ground.

Anticipation set in, and with it nervousness. What if she wasn't impressed?  
Worse, what if she came and decided that the compound would make a lovely  
place for a Romulan- only settlement? Wes knew how things would work out,  
but he couldn't tell the others, could only sit and watch them as the hours grew  
old without the first sign of an arriving ship.

Well after dark, Tokath called a meeting in the courtyard. Looking a bit peaked  
himself, he told them to go ahead and eat, that perhaps the Senator had meant  
the following day. Almost in silence, everyone filed towards the dining rooms,  
tramping carelessly on dirty flowers fallen from the sky. Inside, the now- stale  
food waited patiently for them. There were some grumbles from the Klingons  
that gagh at least would still have been fresh, but the words went unheard by  
Tokath, who did not show up for dinner, either.

During the meal, word went around that the Senator's ship had broken down en  
route, but that she had fortunately found passage on another ship. They were set  
to arrive sometime in the next few days.

Another, less public announcement also was passed around: the Humans were  
to meet that night to discuss the new problem.

Kriana and Arrhat came over that night. Arrhat left fairly soon, probably to see  
Ekan and/or Qu'aemon, but Kriana stayed and talked well into the night. After  
a while, Josolar turned in, leaving the three of them.

Out of nowhere, Wes realized that although he was welcome to stay, the couple  
would really like him to leave. He made some excuse about wanting to take a  
walk, and went outside. He wandered aimlessly for a bit, then headed to  
Castillo's quarters. The other Humans had already gathered there.

He Changed to make them more comfortable. They went over the problem, and  
after a great deal of heated discussion, decided to postpone the trip another  
week. The others had no choice but to accept; Wes was the only one who could  
free them. He could not tell them that he disliked waiting as much as they did,  
that he knew what would come if he hesitated too long.

He felt time speeding away from him with burning wings. Tasha had less than  
a month to go, and the Senator was late. Did he dare pull them out before the  
visit was complete? That the colony was approved was a matter of history, but  
if he managed to mess it up too soon, history would have something to say on  
the matter. Not for the first time, he thought back fondly to when the only thing  
he had to worry about was trying to get a look at the Bridge on the old  
_Enterprise_.

Again they parted as before, a few at a time, with the last meeting set for the  
night before the Senator's new arrival time. As Wes left, he saw his own fears  
reflected in Castillo's lined face. He could offer no comfort; he merely tried to  
smile, and walked out.

When he finally went back to his quarters, Kriana and Trehan were sleeping in  
the main room, and Josolar was snoring in the bedroom. Sleep sounded nice.

VVVVV

Just past noon on the proscribed day, the familiar sound of a ship's engine  
began to hum in the background. Everyone gathered in the courtyard to await  
the landing. Tokath, the two liaisons and a few others, including Kriana, waited  
at the opened gates. From a tiny point of darkness in the cloudless sky, the ship  
grew at an interminal speed. After what could have been hours, it became clear  
enough to see: pale blue, the shade of the morning sky, with lightly traced wings  
that could have flown it without an engine. It was a lovely ship, a ship to bring  
peace, like so many other vessels he had known.

Kriana, her eyes like twin moons, began to tremble. Wes couldn't figure out  
why, until he looked at the ship again. He had seen it before, in a docking bay  
on Romulus. His subconscious picked upon it, and gradually allowed the rest  
of him to become aware.

With a bizarre sense of closure, he knew beyond a doubt that Senator Arkaed  
had gotten a lift from Senator Turin. Of course Turin would be aboard, would  
come ashore, would learn of the child Kriana carried. Heavens only knew what  
he would do when he found out.

Damn him.

Then damn him again.

The blue ship touched gently to the ground.

VVVVV  
Chapter 7: Magic and the Night

Senator Arkaed was lovely. Her hair, longer than the current fashion and black  
with a few streaks of shocking white, coiled down past her slim waist. The  
crimson of her form-fitting jumpsuit brought the slightest emerald tint to her  
dark face, while her deep eyes looked past him into his better self.

When Wes could think coherently again, he took a closer look, and guessed her  
to be about middle-aged, figure at least a century and perhaps older. This did  
nothing to help the effect she was having on his self-control. Some very  
interesting thoughts flitted through his head before he could stop them.

A man, perhaps fifty years old, joined her on the gangway, and from the  
barely-controlled reaction from Kriana, he was the other Senator. He was about  
average height for a Romulan, say about two meters, and had an open, friendly  
face. At first glance, one would believe him an honest sort, the kind of man you  
could trust. No doubt it made him a far more effective politician, and had  
probably been the reason he was elected. Considering his youth, his experience  
could not have been the reason.

Arkaed smiled at him gently, shyly. So it wasn't the gown that had put the blush  
in her cheeks. Great. The senators were lovers. At the very least, he might  
leave Kriana alone now. Her pregnancy was at that stage where she could still  
get away with merely looking fat.

He glanced at her. She looked very very ill, and her discomfort grew as he  
neared her. Something would have to be done and quickly, because Tokath had  
just introduced L'Kor.

"My wife, our Human Liaison, Tasha." Turin took Tasha's hand with a  
practiced air. However, he gave the impression of holding something unclean,  
touched out of politeness and quickly dropped.

As Wes watched helplessly, the General turned to introduce his next friend and  
associate to the Senators.

"And this is our most prized assistant ... "

"Kriana!" Arkaed's face lit with recognition and joy, while Turin offered no  
more than a tight smile.

Arkaed paid no heed, and embraced her happily. After a moment, Kriana  
returned the hug.

"Kriana, you never mentioned that you knew the Senator," said Tokath, a slight  
edge to his voice.

"I didn't want to sound like I was dropping names, General," she replied.  
Tasha, just behind her, looked on with veiled eyes, not smiling at Turin in the  
slightest. Kriana must have told her. Maybe, if she told Tokath ... But no.  
That would not change his plans at all; he still needed to keep the Senators  
happy, and knowing that one of them had raped a dear friend of his would not  
help.

"Kriana," said Arkaed, "do you think you could give us a tour of the compound?  
We can catch up on things." She flashed a heart- warming smile at her. Kriana  
wilted.

"She would love to," said Tokath, his tone allowing no protest. "Wouldn't you,  
Kriana?"

"If you don't mind, I'm feeling a bit ill right now. I'm afraid I wouldn't be a  
good guide." She wouldn't meet Tokath's eyes. "Once you've seen the place, I  
would enjoy talking over old times. Just not right now." She squeezed  
Arkaed's hand. "If you'll excuse me." She slipped into the crowd and was gone.

Tokath looked after her in more than mild shock. He was not often crossed.  
Quickly, he covered. "If you might allow me, I'll show you around. We have  
made a great deal of progress here in the past few months. For example, these  
walls ..." With the senators occupied, the crowd slowly dispersed.

Wes went looking for Kriana. He found her back in her quarters, crying, with  
Arrhat holding her hand. Half a second later, Trehan walked in and enfolded  
her in a hug.

"He should be shot," he whispered. "Twice."

Kriana nodded. "I thought that I could face him, that it wouldn't be like this."  
She shuddered. "I look at him and I can feel his hands on my shoulders and I  
can taste his mouth and I feel so dirty." This last was said in a whisper. Her  
tears flowed freely, and all Wes could think to do was to find her a  
handkerchief.

Trehan kissed her hair softly. She jumped at the touch, and he pulled away. "I  
won't let him hurt you. I promise." He looked at Wes for a long moment, then  
left.

Wes pulled a chair over, took her other hand as gently as he could, and listened.

VVVVV

The night was filled with light and sound. Torches both flame and electronic  
made the courtyard a place of wonder. Someone had found something  
resembling tinsel, and had strung it in strategic spots to catch the flames and  
shine them dancing back. Most of the prisoners had found something slightly  
nicer to wear than their usual garb, and were ambling about the courtyard in  
costume.

The masks were Kriana's idea. One night, she had been looking through the  
computer records for something when she discovered, quite by accident, a  
romantic little story about a masquerade aboard a starship. She fell in love with  
the notion of dressing up in costume and becoming, for a night, someone that  
she wasn't. The idea for the carnival had sprung from that. Tonight, most of  
the people present wore some sort of disguise, and after a while, it became  
difficult to discern the Klingons from the Humans from the Romulans.

As Wes walked through the crowd, he nearly ran into a woman with a  
rust-colored owl mask. Her escort was uncostumed, and with a rush of  
adrenaline, he recognized Turin. Obviously, Senator Arkaed had wanted to see  
the booths and listen to the music. Such as there was.

Six Klingons had replicated a variety of instruments, and were playing  
something interesting with a lot of percussion and a very simple melody. The  
lyrics were low and guttural, and seemed to be part of the back beat.

Wesley couldn't quite make out what they were singing, but hoped fervently that  
it wasn't along the lines of "Kill the Bloody Roms." He had offered to sing  
something at the carnival, then been told point blank that if he tried, he would  
lose the use of both arms for the next month.

At least Senator Arkaed seemed to be enjoying the music, had even greeted the  
singers with loud applause after a decidedly ... interesting song. From the  
words he understood, the lyrics sounded like something equivalent to the old  
one about the salesman and the farmer's daughter. In Klingon. He sighed,  
covering a laugh.

Turin just looked as though he were bored and trying not to show it, applauding  
in the right places, a vacant smile plastered on his face.

Wes couldn't stay around to hear more; he needed to get his own show together.  
Late one night in the barracks, when he was half-asleep, he had been thinking  
how much his abilities were like magic, and how he might have been awed at  
them had the Traveler never shown him just what was involved. This got him  
to thinking about magic, and then about doing a magic show for the children.  
At the thought of himself dressed head to toe in the traditional black cap and top  
hat, he had laughed himself awake again. His laughter had also awakened  
Qu'aemon, who had promptly thrown a pillow at him. Some people had no  
sense of humor.

The sign, lettered by Arrhat, read "Come One and All to See the Magic of Dalek  
the Great and Terrible!" It had a crude painting of a Romulan man in a hat  
with stars on it. It was probably supposed to be him, and he had thanked  
Arrhat for it, wondering to himself if she had ever Travelled as an artist the way  
he Travelled as a musician. No wonder the Traveler had come as an engineer; it  
had to be easier to pretend to be something one was good at because one could  
always pretend to be worse.

Wes opened the kit he had assembled and emptied the contents on the table. He  
had a deck of cards, three large interlocking rings, a mirror, and an assortment  
of pretty stones he he'd found while working in the quarry and wandering in the  
jungle. Another mirror was already in position just opposite the table. The rest  
of his act would come from inside.

It was scheduled to start in about half an hour, but people were already  
gathering. He stretched a blanket across the nearest archway as a curtain, then  
went over his act in his head while the crowd grew. He'd considered asking  
Arrhat to be his requisite "lovely assistant," then decided against it. Knowing  
her, she would no doubt upstage him easily, and this was his show. She  
could watch the performance with the others.

He looked out the curtain, and saw her sitting near the front with Ekan and  
Qu'aemon. At least, he hoped they were Ekan and Qu'aemon. The Romulan  
male wore a serpent's face and dress, while the Klingon sported a simple black  
eye mask and blue jumpsuit, with a midnight blue cape over it.

Arrhat, of course, had to be different, and so had done something to her hair to  
make herself a gorgon. She wore a very short, wispy, mint-green dress that  
just barely qualified as clothing. One strap lay upon her right shoulder, but her  
left side was nearly bare down to her waist. After a few minutes, Qu'aemon  
gave her his cloak.

Shifting his view, he saw Kriana as she found a seat on the opposite side.  
Trehan and Josolar were nowhere to be seen, but they would probably be along  
soon. People dragged chairs from their quarters, others brought blankets and  
spread them on the ground. For what was supposed to be a little bit of magic  
for the children, this was quickly becoming a major event.

His mouth went dry. Out in the darkness, he saw Tasha, dressed as Arkaed had,  
with a feathery bird mask and a blue gown that hid her stomach nicely.  
Somehow, the dress was harder for Wes to imagine on her than the mask. With  
her were her husband, in hues of gold, and daughter, who had a set of  
tissue-paper wings that, with her carefully up-swept hair accenting her pointed  
ears, made her look like nothing so much as a woodland sprite. L'Kor wore the  
tusks of a targ, while his companion for the evening, who might have been  
named Bechaba if Wes remembered correctly, wore an outfit in several shades  
of brown. The two Senators were right behind them. The crowd parted for  
them to get up front: there were obviously certain advantages to rank. Maybe  
he should make some quick changes to the program.

He checked his chronometer --- no time. It would have to stand on its own.

He tugged into place his own costume, a simple black and white outfit, with a  
black cloak and fragile white half-mask. He pulled the cloak around him and  
stepped out.

He raised his arms.

"Greetings one and all! Greetings! Welcome to the realm of Dalek the Great  
and Terrible, Wizard of Shi'hyne!" He waited for the applause to die down  
slightly; everyone was in a good mood.

"The world of enchantment is a dangerous one. Those of you who dislike  
danger, please leave now." A dramatic pause. "Very well. I see you are all of  
brave stock. We shall see how you are at the end." He remained impassive but  
grinned inside. The patter was as old as time itself. He had heard similar spiels  
in theatres on ancient Vulcan, on the streets in New York four hundred years  
ago, and in a bar on Proxima Centauri. The words were the same, the tricks  
were the same, the same look of childlike wonder was on the faces of the  
audience. That was the glory of it.

He let the flow of the words carry him along in his normal tricks. He did a few  
card tricks, which involved calling up a member of the audience to pick a card  
and then guessing which one it was. The mirror at the other end of the  
courtyard worked very nicely with this trick. He did a few basic card tricks, but  
only a few --- they tended to bore the audience after a very short while.

He moved on to the rings. With a few distracting spell words, he found the  
places on them where the metal wasn't continuous and locked and unlocked  
them easily. He moved on to juggling, and began to use his other abilities. He  
took five of the stones, and tossed them up in the air. After a minute, he added  
the rest of the stones. He then tossed the mirror up as well. Using the thoughts  
of the audience as a power source, he kept all the objects airborne. As a last  
touch, he plucked the mirror out of the air and balanced it on his head while the  
rocks orbited. This brought gasps and then a standing ovation as he caught five  
of the stones in each hand and a large jade colored one dead center in the mirror  
without scratching it in the slightest.

He bowed and dropped the rocks. Damn. At least he caught the mirror; for a  
time-traveler, seven years of bad luck could be a life sentence. He set it down  
carefully, then finished his act with the grand finale which had given him the  
idea in the first place.

"And now, ladies and gentlemen, and the rest of you people," a few laughs, "I  
will perform my final illusion. Traditionally, a master of magic should have a  
beautiful woman at his side so that he can put her in a box and saw her in half  
or just make her disappear altogether. I for one cannot allow another person to  
be put into such danger, so I will do my most dangerous deed alone. I will  
make myself disappear." He held his arms aloft, drew his cape around him,  
and spun around. As he turned the third time, he stopped time.

The world was silent. He paused and just looked at the others for a moment, if  
moments had any meaning there. Over a hundred people sat or stood in the  
warm light, frozen as though an icy wind had blown through. He saw whispers  
half-completed, mouths opened in yawns, hands raised to do something or  
another, all stopped.

Well, almost all.

Arrhat glanced at her still husbands. "That's the quietest those two have been in  
ages." She turned back to Wes and smiled. "Thought you might pull something  
like this. Not a bad trick, though."

"Thanks. Why are they stopped?"

"They're not true Travelers. They can Change, and they help me when I go  
someplace, but they haven't the talent to do it themselves."

"Then how did you find them? I thought you met them Travelling, the way we  
met."

"I did meet them Travelling, although I didn't meet you Travelling."

"Then how ... "

"You certainly ask a lot of questions for someone in the middle of an act." A  
somewhat evil smile crossed her face. "Want to make it a really fun trick?"

"Depends." He hated getting half answers.

She explained her idea to him and he laughed. This would be a spectacular  
finish! They prepared in moments, and when they were in place, he restarted  
time.

On the stage, a black-cloaked figure slowed its spinning. The audience sat  
back, disappointed. So much for the trick. Then, a slim hand emerged from the  
cloak, removed the white half-mask, and revealed a startled Arrhat.

Amid a burst of delighted applause, Wesley stood up from between Ekan and  
Qu'aemon, who wore matching expressions of astonishment beneath their  
masks.

With three steps, he was back on the stage. With a flourish, he traded capes  
with Arrhat and received his mask. They took hands and bowed, Wes  
confidently, Arrhat pretending to still be surprised. He kissed her politely on  
the cheek and they both descended to cheers.

VVVVV

He supposed that being the center of attention wasn't all bad. Sela was  
fascinated by his last trick, and dragged her parents over to pry the secret out of  
him. Senator Arkaed joined them, but Turin and the Klingons had left. Wes  
amused Sela with a few more card tricks while chatting with Tasha and the  
others about magic and music. He was loving this: he could spend time around  
Tasha with no thoughts of impropriety by her husband.

He pulled Sela's card from behind her ear, and she laughed. She had a very  
pretty smile, and he couldn't help but return it. How could such a sweet little  
girl ever become the cold Romulan Commander who'd tried to invade Vulcan?  
He did another trick, this one involving the card "walking" along his arm, and  
she giggled again.

As he played with her, he wondered where Arrhat had gone. She had wisely  
pretended to be as shocked at the trick as the rest of the audience, then had  
slipped away with her husbands.

"Dalek," asked Arkaed, "why were you sent here to the prison camp?" He  
smiled and stopped time for a moment. He removed a ring from the Senator's  
hand, and restarted it.

"Some people simply cannot appreciate a little magic now and then." He  
opened his palm and revealed the ring. She gasped, then smiled, delighted.

"I thought you were arrested for vagrancy and public intoxication," said Tasha,  
mirth in her eyes.

He flashed his best grin. "Okay, so a lot of people can't appreciate a little  
magic now and then." He turned back to Arkaed, bowed, and said, "I am Dalek  
of Lin'Ank, master troubadour and amateur magician. Would you like to hear a  
song?"

"I would like that." He looked at her in mild shock, while Tokath, perhaps in  
memory of the last attempt, winced.

Wes started into the first thing in his head: "The Lady of the Blue Ship."  
Arkaed seemed to like it, and probably even thought it Bhad been just now  
written for her. The look of enchantment on her face made him almost wish it  
had been.

Tasha held Sela against her, absently stroking her soft hair. Her green eyes  
were far away, in a Starry Isle of her own.

Tokath stood back and rubbed his ears, appearing somewhat pained. Music  
critic.

As he neared the end of the ballad, at the climax, when the Lady looked from  
the bow of her fantasy vessel to the captain of the tattered Blue Ship, he saw  
Kriana standing alone near an empty booth, frozen in terror: Turin had just  
walked straight through a conversation between two Humans, and was making a  
beeline towards her. Wes had to do something fast.

He started to choke, then coughed loudly. The two women's faces turned to  
concern, while Tokath actually looked relieved.

"I'm sorry. Must've strained my voice tonight," he rasped out. Turin was  
halfway there and closing. "Please excuse me."

Arkaed's hand stopped him. "Perhaps a drink will help." She turned to Tokath.  
"General, why don't you get this man some water?" Tokath looked miffed at  
being ordered, but walked off in the wrong direction.

"No, thank you." He tried to push her away without being too obvious. Turin  
was almost there.

From out of nowhere Wes could see, Arrhat appeared beside Kriana.

"There you are, darling. I've been looking for you all night." In full view of  
Turin, she turned Kriana's frightened face to her own and kissed her with a deep  
and lingering passion.  
Turin's eyes went wide as he stopped dead. Arrhat paid him no attention.

"I don't know about you, but right now, I would love to get back to our  
quarters," she said in a silky voice that could have sent a young boy through  
puberty. She winked demurly and took Kriana's hand, led her back towards  
their quarters. Turin flushed a bright green, and tried to appear as though he  
hadn't seen her.

Wes grinned. Senator Turin obviously had a few personal icks to work  
through. He would not be seeking out Kriana's company anytime soon.

Tokath returned with an emerald-green crystal glass filled with ... something.  
Wes thanked him, then drank it carefully. A buzzing feeling went through him  
almost at once, and he returned to the song with renewed vigor. At the end, he  
added another stanza, which basically was a call to the audience to sing of the  
Lady, and pray that someday she would return to the Starry Isle.

Arkaed applauded happily; Turin approached her from behind, and wrapped his  
arms around her. Sela yawned as her father picked her up. Tasha stared for a  
moment, then offered a smile and a handshake.

"That was lovely, Dalek."

Not to lose the opportunity, he took her hand, bowed, and lightly touched her  
knuckles to his lips. "My pleasure, lady."

Perhaps Tokath didn't notice, for he made no reaction. With a final bow, Wes  
left them and wandered through the crowd. His heart was light, his head  
spinning in a pleasant manner. Happiness bubbled through him, and he knew  
that he could do anything the universe asked of him.

For the last time in a long while, he felt joy.

VVVVV  
Chapter 8: Thunder and Silence

The first thing Wesley was aware of was a reminder of why he should never  
drink anything Romulan, alcoholic, or green. His teeth were alive with tortured  
nerve endings. His eyes had an unidentifiable crust around them which made  
blinking an exercise in pain-endurance. His tongue seemed to be attached to the  
roof of his mouth by a process not unlike grafting two trees together. His hair  
hurt.

The second thing Wesley was aware of was the extreme darkness. It was no  
doubt well before morning, and all he really wanted to do was to point a phaser  
to the orangutan that was trying to break out of his skull, then get more sleep.

The third thing Wesley was aware of was Ekan, shaking him awake and yelling  
that someone had killed the Senator.

He sat straight up, regretted it immediately, then stood anyway. The room was  
at a delightful angle, reminiscent of some very old vids he had once seen of a  
"television program" starring two men who dressed up in tights.

"Holy hangover," he muttered, then looked at Ekan. The Romulan (Vulcan?  
He wasn't really sure.) looked as though he could be hit with a ground car and  
wouldn't notice.

"You didn't know about this." Ekan shook his head numbly.  
"He never told us. He said that she'd fallen ill and had to go home." Not  
Arrhat. The Traveler.

"Maybe the first time around, she did." She. His head was finally clear enough  
to let the implications of "She" sink into him. "Arkaed's ... dead?" The words  
felt distant, like something out of a storybook. The Queen died in childbirth, so  
the King remarried, all long before the story ever began. No one ever mourns  
the long-dead Queen.

"Not yet, but close enough. There was a snake in her bed. Turin found her,  
took her to the infirmary. Josolar and Mirith are working on her now." His  
voice lowered. "I don't know if Sunoph'l'pighis has enough venom to make  
more antidote."

"Oh." He saw her, the long soft hair, the brightness radiating from her eyes,  
heard that rich voice speak with perfect understanding of her place in the  
scheme of things. A little part of him died as the next thought filled his mind.

"They don't have separate rooms, do they?"

"No, fortunately. If they had, he might not have found her until morning."

"If they had, she would have found him. Someone was trying to kill Turin."  
Ekan's eyes went wide. Obviously, he had been too upset by the news, or he  
would have figured it out on his own. "Did Arrhat tell you what he did?"

"Yes. You don't think that Kriana ... "

"I don't know," said Wes quietly. But he did know. Kriana would have done it,  
given half a chance. For her sake, though, so would Trehan, or Josolar, or  
Arrhat. Hell, he probably would have killed Turin if he wasn't terrified of  
screwing up the timestream.

Trehan had told Kriana that he would not allow Turin to hurt her, but Trehan  
was almost phobic of snakes. Josolar liked snakes and loved Kriana, although  
he had kept it hidden fairly well. Arrhat knew how things were supposed to  
turn out, could do anything within that pattern, and certainly cared for Kriana.  
As for Kriana herself, he had no doubts whatsoever that she was capable of  
killing Turin.

Ekan stared through him. Maybe he was telepathic, for all he said was "Fish."

VVVVV

A small crowd had gathered in the infirmary. Ekan and Wes found Arrhat and  
Kriana sitting beside the large bird cage. One glance confirmed his fears:  
Arkaed was not doing well. Without words, the four of them huddled together,  
knowing what would come should the Senator die.

Tokath and Turin walked in from the opposite side.

" ... have utmost faith in Drs. Mirith and Josolar."

"I'm sure you do." Turin actually looked absent, lost. "Whoever it was wanted  
to kill me, you know."

"Don't say that," Tokath soothed. "It was a needle-snake. We have them all  
over in the jungle."

"In the jungle. Not in here." His eyes cast about the room, finally setting on  
Kriana, who could only return the gaze. Wes had seen that look on deer with  
light in their eyes, preparing to die. But there was something else.

She hadn't placed the snake in Arkaed's bed. Wes knew it to the center of his  
being. Any of the others might have, but Kriana had innocence in her eyes. She  
had liked Arkaed; she would not have harmed her to have revenge on Turin.  
There were better methods for that.

Turin took this in, let his eyes wander more. Wes wondered who would bear  
the blame. Turin couldn't blame Kriana without his own crime becoming public  
knowledge, and Kriana was very well- liked through the colony. Another snake  
could find its way into his bedroom.

The door to the surgery opened, and Josolar, exhausted, stepped out holding a  
very weak-looking Sunoph'l'pighis. The bird held the snake in its gaze hungrily  
and clicked its beak. Josolar took a deep breath.

"Mirith says that she has a chance. We managed to remove a great deal of the  
poison, and our snake had venom to make just enough antidote. We hope. If  
she needs any more, she will die. We wouldn't have time to get another snake,  
and we can't replicate the venom or the antidote with the equipment we have  
here."

A sigh went through the crowd. She would live! Before any amount of  
happiness could seep in, though, Turin strode to where Josolar stood, and  
announced:

"There will be an inquiry into this immediately. I intend to find out who tried to  
kill the Senator using any means necessary. I am hereby taking command of  
this prison camp until further notice." Tokath gaped, then started to protest, but  
Turin silenced him. "If anyone attempts to impede my investigation, that  
person will immediately be arrested for aiding and abetting the attempted  
murderer. No one will be held above suspicion. Do I make myself clear?"

"You cannot put this colony under martial law," said Tokath, quietly. The  
snake lifted its head to stare at the hungry bird. Josolar stilled its movement.

"This isn't a colony. Despite your opinion, General, this is a prison camp. It's  
time it started to be run like one."

"I will contact the Senate. You have no right ... "

"I will also contact the Senate, and tell them how shoddy of a system I found  
here, with prisoners allowed to walk around without any restraint. If Arkaed  
dies, I will hold you just as responsible as the person who placed the snake in  
her bed. Fraternizing with these animals has made you weak, Tokath. I  
suppose your next wife will be a Klingon?" He grimaced. "At least Klingons  
have some modicum of civilization."

Tokath merely stared at him, unbelieving. Thank goodness Tasha wasn't there.  
Wes felt sick to his stomach.

The golden bird in the corner shrieked for the snake's blood.

"As Arkaed is ill, I have all the powers granted her by the Senate until she is  
well or there is another Senator sent here. Until that time, what I say is law.

"Now, this is what I am going to do first."

VVVVV

The inquiry went quickly. With the help of his personal guards, Turin was able  
to interview every person in the colony in the course of two days. He wanted to  
know who had been where, when, and with whom.

Fortunately for Wes, he'd been seen by dozens of people that night, at all hours.  
The magic show had granted him a kind of celebrity, and since he appeared  
Romulan, he was not subject to the same scrutiny as the Humans or Klingons.  
Amazingly, the Fabulous Five of Fish had only the briefest of encounters with  
Turin, and released. Wes still held them as prime suspects, but Turin did not  
seem to care, not even holding Kriana for longer than the others, and that  
supervised by his guards.

After a while, it became obvious that he was holding the aliens for nearly twice  
as long as the Romulans. Had one of them decided to take Imno's death to heart  
and rid the universe of a Romulan or two? Wes didn't want to know.

VVVVV

By the end of the second day, Arkaed's condition had neither improved nor  
deteriorated. She simply was.

Turin ordered all the prisoners to gather in the courtyard. They came, some  
frightened, some beyond caring, all knowing that this announcement would  
determine their fates for better or for worse. Wes stood with Trehan, Josolar  
and Kriana, Arrhat near Ekan and Qu'aemon, and K'Toktehn all alone near the  
perimeter of the crowd. Doctor Mirith was the only one absent, choosing to  
stay with Arkaed in case of any change in her condition.

Tokath and Tasha stood together near the platform, Sela in front of them.  
Without speaking, they held hands and waited for the Senator to speak.

Turin stepped onto the dais. No one had stood there since Imno's death.

"As you know, I have been conducting an investigation into the events of two  
nights ago. As of yet, Senator Arkaed's condition has shown no improvement."  
He paused, as if pained. "It is a pity that you prisoners cannot appreciate the  
kindness that has been shown you by your benefactors. Some might say that too  
much kindness has been shown you." He sent a significant glance towards  
Tokath, who met the gaze with composure.

"Some would say that any kindness would be too much. Some people also kick  
small animals for enjoyment." Tokath's voice was perfectly neutral.

"Some sleep with them." The General's eyes blazed. Tasha looked as though  
she would spit nails. Preferably Turin's.

Trehan whispered to his friends: "So Turin sleeps with small animals, does  
he?" Josolar shushed him, but Kriana smiled.

Heedless of the interruption, Turin continued: "My  
investigation has uncovered a conspiracy among your so-called colonists."  
Conspiracy? But there wasn't any ... A cool breeze skittered through the sticky  
air, bringing chills down his spine. He couldn't possibly know ...

"The Humans," he said the word as if it tasted oily, "have been conspiring for  
some time to overthrow the guards and seize control of the camp." No ...  
"They have been gathering late at night, making plans. The last meeting was  
the night before our arrival, no doubt to plan the assassination of Senator  
Arkaed and myself.

"This behavior cannot be tolerated.

"The Humans will be sent back to Romulus on the next transport for more  
detailed questioning. If Arkaed dies, they will be executed immediately. If not,  
they may be permitted to live on Romulus in a more appropriate setting, since  
they obviously cannot be trusted in a prison camp environment.

"So speaks the representative for the Senate."

Tokath, a flame burning hot within him, said in a dangerous voice: "I will fight  
this with every ounce of my being, Turin. You will not do this."

Turin smiled, but it was cold and dry. "You have no say in this, Tokath. You  
have little good will in the Senate right now. If you fight me relying on upon it,  
you may find yourself in prison with them." He let that sink in, then: "I will  
even grant you one 'kindness.' Your wife will be permitted to remain with you,  
as you have already sworn that there was no way that she could have attended  
the meetings without your knowledge, something I seriously doubt but will  
accept for now. You will continue to run the prison camp for the Romulans and  
the Klingons, assuming you can keep them in line, for as long as you live.

"However, if you do try to oppose me, I am afraid that your wife must be held  
responsible for the actions of her friends, and you both will be taken to  
Romulus for questioning as to how this debacle occurred. You should keep in  
mind that no one else will take command of this camp should you be  
imprisoned or executed. Therefore the Klingons would also have to be returned  
to Romulus.

"I advise you to consider your options very carefully before you contact the  
Senate." The trap sprung; Tokath's options had been reduced to two. He could  
try to protect the Humans, and risk everything he had ever dreamed in a futile  
fight against the man who held all the cards.

If he did, it was likely that all the aliens would die, his wife and daughter  
included, and he himself would perish with his dream.

If he chose to remain silent, nearly one hundred Klingons had a chance for life,  
and he could save the woman he loved, even if she would hate him for the rest  
of her life.

There really were no options left.

"The transport will arrive in three days. During that time, the gate will be  
locked. No one is to be allowed in or out. Any Human caught trying to escape  
will bring instant judgement on all Humans in the colony. All of you will be  
executed. The same holds true for the Klingons. Any Romulan caught aiding  
an escape will be similarly dealt with. We will have order here if I have to  
personally kill every prisoner. Do not make that necessary."

Then we simply won't get caught, thought Wesley grimly. His own path was  
clear now: he had to get the Humans out. Tonight. There could be no more  
delays. Tasha would have to come with them. If she stayed, she would be  
executed as an accomplice.

He moved beside Castillo, and mouthed the new plan in his ear. With an  
imperceptible nod, he agreed. There was something else, something that he was  
forgetting ...

He whispered one final instruction. Castillo's eyes widened barely, but he  
nodded again.

Timestream be damned. Tasha had to be told: Sela could not come under any  
circumstances. He would cheat history after all.

He hoped.

VVVVV

The Humans could not risk another gathering in the compound: they needed to  
reach the relative safety of the jungle for Wes to take them to the place they  
would call home. This required them to actually leave the compound, a distinct  
problem with the new orders.

Wes had an idea.

An hour before midnight, the plan went into motion. Ekan, who had been  
brought into the Humans' confidence only by Wes's reassurances, was to stand  
watch until midnight, when he would be relieved. He would turn a blind eye to  
any attempted escape for as long as possible, but when his replacement arrived,  
he would have to turn on them.

Having no other options, Castillo agreed on behalf of the others. In groups of  
two and three, the Humans fled over the walls, being sure to leave ropes behind  
so as to defer suspicion from Ekan. Everything was done in utter silence.

At last, the only ones left were Wesley and Castillo. Tasha had not shown yet.  
Wesley kept glancing at his chronometer, worried. The next guard was due at  
any time. Where was she???

Across the courtyard, a figure approached. Wes and Castillo ducked behind  
two barrels, trying not to breathe.

"Who goes there?" said Ekan in a low voice.

"Reslan." The other guard. Damn! The two Humans stared at each other  
helplessly. "I'm here to relieve you."

"Why? It's not midnight yet." Ekan's voice betrayed all the emotion of a  
Vulcan.

"I thought you might like to spend some time with Arrhat." They could actually  
hear the guard's grin. What a time for someone to be nice.

"Well, I appreciate that." Ekan was stalling. Wes risked a peek out, and he saw  
why. The new guard's back was toward the courtyard, where Tasha stood  
holding a bundle and looking  
terrified. Despite his warning, she had brought Sela. He felt something turn  
inside him, like a page in an old book, as he watched Tasha's actions become a  
part of history.

She turned quietly towards the wall, where one of the escapees had left a rope  
just out of sight of the guards. She stared up at the five-meter-tall wall,  
despondent. There was no way she could climb it with a child in her arms and  
another in her belly. The wall might as well have been fifty meters.

Carefully, she moved to the wall, and moved towards the locked gate. She was  
still behind the guard, but would be unable to do anything if the guard was still  
there when she drew near.

Wes counted his options. They could incapacitate the guard. They could kill  
the guard. He couldn't Travel to Tasha; his Travelling wasn't exact enough. He  
would probably end up somewhere in the woods.

Then all the options fled him, as Sela cried out and the next page turned. The  
guard turned, raised her weapon.

Castillo leapt out to distract the guard. She spun, blasted him with her  
disruptor. He fell to the dusty ground unmoving. She turned back to Tasha.

"Put the child down, and walk over here slowly." Tasha set Sela on the ground,  
kissed her on the top of the head, then took a step forward. She turned on her  
heel, and sprinted towards the rope as fast as she could, knowing that she would  
not be able to climb it.

The guard aimed her weapon to fire.

Ekan's gun crashed down at the base of her skull and she fell. "This way!" he  
hissed. Wes grabbed Castillo beneath the arms, and dragged him toward the  
gate, which Ekan was even now in the process of opening. Tasha lifted Sela as  
she ran back towards the gate.

The lock was impossible. Ekan changed the setting on his disruptor and  
incinerated it. Wes carried Richard through and into the jungle.

After they had gone about a hundred meters, Wesley's arms burned. There was  
no sign or sound of Tasha. A feeling of dread spread through him. He carefully  
set Richard down behind a cicatrin tree, hoping that no needle-snakes wanted a  
Human snack tonight. Almost without thought, he pulled a leaf from the tree.  
For Jack. He moved back towards the compound.

The shouts inside confirmed his suspicions. They had been discovered,  
probably from the disruptor blast. Against his better judgement, he climbed the  
wall, and peered in.

Tasha, Sela, and Ekan were surrounded by armed guards. Turin must have slept  
in his clothes, because he appeared fully dressed in front of them. Tokath stood  
behind him in his night-clothes, agony on his face. Tasha would not meet his  
eyes.

A straggling crowd gathered, as Turin gloated over his captives. Ekan just  
smiled peacefully.

Wes wanted to stay, to see what he knew must come next, to prevent it if he  
could, or die trying. Something else called him. There were fifteen Humans  
who needed him. He had promised to free them, and if he delayed, they would  
be discovered and then they would die.

He crept down from the wall, and slipped back the way he had come. The  
warm night air had done nothing for the numbness in his heart.

He picked up Castillo, slung him over his shoulders, and carried him to the  
rendezvous point. As they reached the spring, he came to, and Wes set him  
down. His back thanked him.

"Come on. We're almost there."

"There?"

"The clearing."

"Is Tasha there?"

Wes stopped. There was a sting behind his eyes he hadn't felt in quite a while.

"No. They caught her."

"What?!" Castillo was fully awake now.

"She was right behind us, but she and Ekan were caught by the guards."

"We have to go back for her."

"We can't. If we don't leave now, they'll kill all of us."

"I'm not leaving her." He turned, and before Wes could stop him, dashed back  
the way they had come. Wes considered stopping him, and knew there was no  
time. He entered the clearing.

"They found us out. We have to go now," he said woodenly. He grabbed the  
hands of the two nearest him. "Everyone hold hands, and think ... think happy  
thoughts."

He began his breathing exercises, trying to calm his spirit enough to reach  
inside, touch that part of him that Travelled the ways of time and space. Part of  
him worried that he couldn't do it, that he had never Travelled with more than  
one other person and what in the name of Kolker was he doing trying it with  
fifteen others??

Like a flash of blueness from a leaden sky, he heard the Traveler's voice inside  
of him, telling him how to dance across the universe if he would reach out just  
so. He Changed back to his true form.

There! He felt it, like a smooth stone in his hand, warm as a Human body.  
Gently, he twisted, opening the passage. He saw the timestream in all its glory,  
stepped lightly into it, going for distance and not time, keeping his destination  
firmly in mind.

And Travelled.

VVVVV

Insidethetimestreameverythingwaslightandcolorandsoundwithout  
asoundorthebriefestbeamoflightandtheuniversewashisplaything  
looktheregoesababyuniversemadeofmusichowcuteandallwasgoodand  
sweetandmorebeautifulthanarainbowandhelookedtowheretheywere  
goingandknewthatitwasgood.

VVVVV

The sky was green, the grass was blue. Then he fell.

The disorientation passed. Wes found himself staring face up into a gorgeous  
Spring sky. Carefully, he stood. The others were grouped around him, looking  
ill. The first time one Travelled, that tended to happen.

"Welcome to your new home."

"Where are we?" asked someone.

"Someplace safe. The world is called Gault. Assuming I got the placement  
right, we are about one hundred kilometers thataway from the colony."

Groans went up from the Humans.

"You can reach it in five days if you follow the sun. By then, you should have a  
story in mind as to why you are here. Maybe your shuttle went way off course.  
Whatever you do, you cannot mention the _Enterprise_ or me, and you can  
never tell about the prison camp, or the Klingons there." As Wes spoke the  
words, he knew beyond a doubt that someone would tell, would start rumors  
about the prison camp in the Carraya Sector and the Humans of the  
_Enterprise-C_. That, too, was part of history. "Oh, and there should be a little  
boy, a Klingon, in the colony. Be kind to him."

"What about you?" asked a woman Wes vaguely recognized as a leader among  
them, although he couldn't remember who she was. Now that Castillo was  
gone, she looked to be the one to take them the rest of the way home.

"I'm going back. I'm going to try to get Tasha and Castillo." He had not even  
known until he said it, but as the words formed, he knew that his path had been  
set long before he had ever taken his first breath and screamed into the San  
Francisco morning fog. This morning.

"Good luck," the woman said simply. Fulton! That was her name.

"You too." He centered himself, reached inward again, and Travelled towards  
the circle's joining.

Chapter 9: The Serpent and the Golden Bird

It was still dark, just barely. There was water in his shoes. Wes had managed  
to Travel directly into the spring. It was a good thing he'd materialized right  
side up this time.

He hoped fervently that he hadn't changed time-location, or else this would  
become an impossible task. With a silent plea to no one in particular, he headed  
back towards the compound as fast as he could.

Halfway there, he nearly ran headlong into a guard. The man raised his  
disruptor. "Don't move, Human." Bloody hell. He'd forgotten to Change back  
to Dalek.

Wes racked his brains for the guard's name. He had arrived with Turin.  
"Tr'endet, what's this all about?"

"Cut it, Human. We know you tried to escape. Turin wants to make a special  
example of the ones we catch. Tell me where the others are, and he might let  
you die." Maybe, just maybe ...

"You've got it wrong. I was out taking a walk ... "

"Get moving." He tightened his grip on the disruptor.

"Okay, okay." This had better work. He began to walk in front of Tr'endet,  
then turned around. "Wait! I forgot."

"What?" The Romulan was looking straight at him.

He Changed into a semblance of John Doe, a being of pure light thousands of  
candle-powers in strength. The guard screamed as his inner eyelid slammed  
shut, and he dropped the disruptor. Wes grabbed it, set it to stun, and shot him.  
Then, he Changed into Tr'endet.

He quickly dragged the real Romulan into a thicket and left him. His sight  
would return in a while, long after Wes was gone.

He walked back to the compound, trying not to look  
conspicuous. He was met at the gate by a guard whom he knew, fortunately.

"Halt! Why are you back so soon?"

"Turin called me on my communicator."

"All right. Go ahead in." Whew.

He walked through the gates, and looked in shock at the courtyard. The dais  
had another structure on it now, a wooden beam to tie prisoners to for  
execution.

The first light of morning peeked over the horizon. If Turin was the theatric  
type, he would schedule the execution for dawn and make it mandatory.

Already, people were gathering in the courtyard, trying not to look at one  
another. He saw Kriana on the other side, her face pale and drawn. Josolar,  
beside her, put his arms around her. She didn't seem to notice.

Within a few minutes, the majority of the prisoners were there. The absence of  
the Humans was keenly obvious. A drum, very low, could be heard, keeping a  
soft heartbeat in the background. Slowly, with measured steps, several guards  
brought in Ekan, almost nude. His uniform had been torn from him in insult.  
He looked at no one. His wife and husband were nowhere to be seen.

Next came Castillo and Tasha together, he leading her gingerly by the arm.  
Wes suddenly noticed how swollen her stomach was. She could go into labor at  
any time, and Turin would kill her anyway.

Castillo led her to the dais, where they stood together. There was something in  
his stance, in her eyes, that betrayed them. She loved Tokath, but she had loved  
Castillo first.

And Tokath knew.

The look on the General's face as he walked out behind Turin could have frozen  
the heart of a star. He had loved her, had given her a home, had offered her  
friends a chance for life, had made a child with her, but she would rather die  
with her Human lover. Wes felt a brief pity for the man.

Sela stood in front of the dais, her eyes round. A Klingon woman, Gi'ral, held  
her tiny hand. A sense of what must be filled Wesley as he remembered. Gi'ral  
would eventually have a daughter of her own, a sweet half-Klingon  
half-Romulan girl whom he would call Belle. Another circle.

Turin stepped onto the dais, and began to speak. The words were unimportant;  
he would use any excuse possible to exterminate the Humans. Wes didn't  
particularly care why. He heard Turin say something about fitting all the  
remaining prisoners with baridium pellets to keep track of them.

He took a deep breath, and stopped time.

Almost.

The world speeded up and slowed down and people walked backwards and  
moved slowly forwards. He didn't understand, until he saw Arrhat across the  
courtyard.

"Arrhat! Stop it!"

She said nothing, only continued pushing against him lightly.

"He's going to kill Ekan. Don't you even care about that?"

Her eyes were hooded, but her voice was calmer than a summer evening. "You  
cannot save them like this. The timestream would not survive it. Ekan  
understands." She turned towards the dais, where Ekan awaited his death. She  
would not give in, even for him. "This is your final test, Wesley."

He pushed harder, and she pushed back, not even straining. There was no way  
to get past her. He stopped, trying to gather himself for one last assault. Time  
moved inexorably forward again, as Turin read from his scroll the charges  
against the prisoners. When he finished, they would die. The time-traveler was  
out of time.

He looked around wildly, found himself in front of the infirmary. He ducked  
inside. The golden bird cried out for freedom. That was it!

He turned to the bird's cage, and ignoring the nips, placed a hand over its eyes.  
The bird went still. Good. He removed the hand, tore a strip from his uniform,  
and tied it over its eyes. It wouldn't last long, but it didn't need to last for more  
than a minute.

He drew the bird out, felt its talons pierce the skin on his arm, ignored it.

He opened the snake's cage, grabbed him firmly the way Josolar had shown  
him, and lifted him out. The half-lidded eyes opened wide, and the tongue  
darted out to taste the crisp morning air. He heard Turin's voice echo:

"The penalty for the above charges is death." It was time.

He strode outside, a giant golden bird on one arm, a huge snake held in the  
other.

"Stop this!" His voice rang out with power and authority. He Changed back  
into Dalek, and added a nimbus around him for effect. He was Dalek the Great  
and Terrible, Wizard of Shi'hyne, the man who had taken down a Klingon  
warrior, who held the two fiercest animals in the jungle in his hands without  
fear, and who had just changed shape before their eyes.

"Release them, or taste my power!" He gestured, and flames appeared in the  
fireplace. Of course it was an illusion, but it looked good.

The guards trembled and lowered their weapons. Turin was not impressed. He  
raised his own disruptor and shot at Wes, who had just sense enough to duck as  
the door to the infirmary vaporized. Damn.

The snake fell from his hand, as the bird's blinder came loose. Free at last, it  
spread its wings, pounding Wesley's head with its power. Then, it seized the  
snake, and flew into the sky.  
He had to get to them now!

Wes ran on pure adrenaline. He launched himself towards the dais, almost  
flying himself. Just a meter left to go ... He touched Tasha's hand. Ekan,  
knowing what was to come, grabbed Castillo's arm. He Changed absently back  
to his own form again. Center ... Center ...

"Kill them!" Turin's command cut through the guards' fear. They raised the  
disruptors, pointed them towards the four on the dais.

Wesley turned his head as he tried to reach that calm center one last time, and it  
was as though the timestream had slowed itself to a crawl.

A shriek from the dawn of time echoed through the compound, as the raptor  
flew overhead with the serpent entwined in its claws. High against the  
blood-colored morning sky, the bodies outlined in night and fire became  
indistinguishable, the bird-serpent from ancient legend come to reclaim its  
birthright as lord and master of them all.

The snake, wounded by the bird's talons and the long captivity, suddenly twisted  
and snapped at its captor's wing. The bird screamed and dropped it, and Wes  
watched entranced as the snake fell and landed at Turin's feet. Dying now, and  
angry as all hell, it raised its head to strike at his unprotected leg ...

Center ... He touched it, stroked it lovingly, felt the power move through him,  
become him, and he could do anything, become anything in that limitless  
instant. He saw the timestream, splashed into it as a child splashes into a  
wading pond. This was his true place, his gift. He held to Tasha's hand, and  
Travelled.

Insidethetimestreameverythingwasbeautifulagainandhehadnot  
feltsoatpeacesincenowwhoareyouarrhatbutyouarenotjustarrhat  
areyouyouarefarmorebecauseicanseeyounowandwhatisthatyoure  
doingwaitjustaminutetashawaitcomebackcomebackcomeback ...

VVVVV

He went back, of course. His first thought had been to find the other survivors  
from the _Enterprise-C_, but his lost charges were not there, nor had they ever  
been. The only place left to look was the colony.

When he arrived, he found himself in some anonymous patch of jungle. With  
no other recourse, he tried to find a familiar path or landmark, listen for some  
sign of life, anything. It took him most of the day, but he found a familiar trail,  
and followed it to where he had left Tr'endet sleeping. He was, of course, no  
longer there.

Quietly then, he went back to the compound, hiding at the least sound. He  
reached the wall after nightfall, and again peeped over the side. Not a soul was  
in the courtyard, and a brief premonition flashed through him: Turin had made  
good on his threat to kill them all, and had left.

Then, he saw a guard, one of the camp's regular complement, standing in the  
shadows near the gate. Wes realized, feeling a little foolish, that it was time for  
dinner; everyone was probably in the common room. He decided to wait where  
he was rather than risk entering the compound yet. He did not have long to  
wait.

People began filing out, gathering around the dais. Wes saw Trehan standing  
alone, watching the wooden structure as though it might tell him why all his  
friends were gone.

Tokath stepped out into the firelight, gently holding Sela's hand. He did not,  
Wes noticed, touch the platform.

"My dear friends," he began in a voice so unlike his own that for a moment Wes  
wondered who had spoken. "These past few days have been a great strain on us  
all. Death has visited our young colony far too many times." He paused, a  
heavy weight on his soul. "I cannot promise you that it will not continue to  
stalk our courtyard. I can, however, swear to you that this ... this monstrosity  
that has seen so many die will itself die. Maybe, with these cleansing flames,  
we can arise anew from the ashes."

He pulled down a torch from the wall, and cast it onto the dais. The wood,  
somewhat damp from the wet air, did not catch at first. Then, with a sigh, the  
hungry flames licked against it, and the wood erupted into flame.

The bonfire grew quickly. Klingons and Romulans gathered close by its light  
and warmth. Trehan moved in, only to be joined by Josolar, just leaving the  
infirmary. The two clasped hands and watched the fire, burning smoke in their  
eyes.

Wes did not see Kriana or K'Toktehn anywhere, and hadn't really expected to  
see Arrhat or her husbands. Some of the smoke drifted towards him, and it  
smelled of campfires from long ago.

Kriana exited the infirmary a few minutes later. She spoke to Tokath, then  
faced the firelit forms.

"You will be happy to know that Senator Arkaed has awakened." Wes could  
see smiles amid the dancing lights. "Since her health is still fragile, she has  
authorized me to act in her stead. I have already contacted the Senate with my  
recommendations about the colony. I told them that General Tokath has done  
an outstanding job thus far, and that he should be allowed to continue as warden  
of this particular prison." Had the announcement come on a happier day, there  
would have been applause. As it was, there was the scarcest murmer through  
the crowd.

"I have also apprised the Senate of the events of the past few days, and of my  
theories concerning them." She hesitated, but only for the briefest moment.  
Tokath nodded to her.

"According to Doctor Mirith, the venom of the needle-snake is deadly within  
ten minutes. Senator Arkaed was brought to the infirmary well within that  
limit. Turin must have been there as she was bitten, but he said that she had  
been unconscious when he found her. Also, one of his guards, a man named  
Thindlst, was missing during the initial landing. Turin's other guards have not  
seen him, although he was on the ship. This evening, one of those guards,  
whom I shall not name, confided to me that Turin had ordered him to kill  
Thindlst the night the Senator was bitten.  
"I believe that Turin came here with the express purpose of destroying our  
colony, and saw a conspiracy among the Humans as a means of doing just that.  
I believe that Turin ordered Thindlst to capture a needle-snake, then had him  
killed so that he could not turn informer. He used Arkaed, and he planned to  
use us all. Instead, he was killed by another snake. You may be happy to know  
that Sunoph'l'pighis is recovering nicely.

"I'd like to tell you that I know for sure that the Senate will accept my  
recommendations, but I don't. All I can tell you is that we might have a chance.

"Thus speaks the representative for the Senate." With nothing more to say, she  
walked back to where Trehan and Josolar stood. The three friends gathered  
close together and watched the dying flames.

Wes knew how some things would turn out. He knew that the colony would be  
allowed to continue, that Tokath would remarry and have another daughter, that  
Sela would grow into the image of her mother. He knew that eventually the  
Romulans would enter into a war with the Klingons, and would lose. These  
things were a part of history.

He did not know how life would work out for Kriana the leader and her baby, or  
for Trehan the dreamer and Josolar the healer. Perhaps he would never know.  
He could not Travel back, for fear of meeting himself, and he probably would  
not Travel to their future, just in case the war brought something to them that he  
would not wish to face.

"Fish," he whispered from his dark perch, and convinced himself that the water  
in his eyes came from the smoke that drifted up from the courtyard and floated  
lazily towards the dark and dreaming sky.

VVVVV

He had not arrived far from where the Traveler waited. He was sure that his  
footsteps, crunching through the Autumn leaves, were audible for miles. Like  
he cared.

He saw the tall alien sitting on the large flat rock where he himself had sat a  
lifetime ago to inspect a stone. He did not even have the stone anymore. He  
sighed, then plopped himself down beside the Traveler.

After a long while, he said, "I failed." The Traveler said nothing, only sat and  
listened. "Well, aren't you going to yell at me, or say anything?"

The Traveler turned his odd face to him, and smiled that mysterious smile that  
had always bugged the hell out of him. "Congratulations. You have finished  
your training. You are a Traveler."

Huh? "But ... I didn't pass the test. I lost Tasha. I had her right there. I was  
going to take her and Castillo back home, and Arrhat stole them away with  
Ekan. I failed her."

"You still do not see, do you?"

"See what?" What the hell was he talking about this time?

"You fulfilled your task, Wesley. The Humans are free and the colony will  
thrive. As I said, you have passed."

"But Tasha ... "

" ... Is exactly where she needs to be. And Richard is with her. Be happy for  
her, for they are both finally where they belong." He paused, as a sad look  
crossed his face. "Now, it is time for you to go where you belong."

"Home ... " For a moment, he couldn't remember where that might be. Robin's  
face filled his mind. Home was wherever she was.

"Yes. But first, I have three gifts for you. Consider them graduation presents."

He reached into a pocket, and drew something out. He opened his palm, to  
reveal a small round crystal with flecks of something inside. Wes took it,  
looked in, and saw tiny mirror images of his own face. He looked from the  
reflections to the Traveler.

"I give you your past. You will find once more that which you had thought lost  
forever."

He reached into another pocket. Again, he opened his palm, to reveal the  
heartstone Robin had given him.

"I give you your present." With a cry, Wesley snatched it, held it against his  
heart. It glowed a brilliant blue.

"How did you find it? I thought it was gone for good."

"I saw where Doctor Mirith put it, and I obtained it when she wasn't looking."

The words drifted through his foggy brain to settle home. "You saw ... "

The Traveler Changed into K'Toktehn. "I saw."

"You ... "

"While you sat here just before your journey, I went to Khitomer, got captured,  
and spent years in the prison camp, listening."

"But why?"

"Because I knew you would need me there to help, and because I wanted to  
know Dodge and Richard. Besides, you would have been pulverized in a match  
with a real Klingon, but appearing to knock one down can be just as useful."  
He smiled, and Wes knew it for the truth. He Changed back, then reached back  
into his pocket one last time.

"Finally," he said, a strange sadness in his voice, "I give you your future,  
Wesley Crusher." He opened his palm to reveal another heartstone, twin to the  
one he held. While he tried to figure out exactly how he had come by another  
one, the Traveler Changed again to the form he had during that trip to the  
Renaissance, so long ago. He was Human, older, with silvering hair. He  
looked like Wesley's mental picture of what his father might have become, had  
he lived.

Or his father's son.

"Oh my god ... " he breathed, his mind refusing to comprehend the now obvious  
truth.

"Oh, I'm sure I've had that idea now and then, but fortunately it passed."

Wes stared at ... himself. "That was how you always knew where and when to  
be, isn't it? When Mom was in the warp bubble, you knew when to be there."

"Because I put her there in the first place." Spirals had filled his/their dreams  
for years, and suddenly the spirals connected, ran back upon themselves. The  
universe was clear and free and beautiful as the crystals in his hand.

Wes, the younger, asked the only thing that popped into his mind: "Who is  
Arrhat?"

The older Wes smiled affectionately. "'Arrhat' is someone very special to me,  
or should I say us. Do not judge her actions. She too does as she must. I  
promise you that you will encounter her again."

"Obviously." They both laughed.

"You must return to Robin now," said Wes the elder after an endless time.

"Can you tell me anything else before I go?"

"Just ... Just love her. Be the universe for her. You still only have a lifetime,  
and it won't be long enough to spend with her."

Wes nodded. "When will you go now?"

"First? I will go to your wedding. My memories have grown hazy, and I would  
really like to refresh them. After that, I have one last stop to make, and then I  
can go home."

"Which is where?"

"You already know." He did, too.

Chapter 10: The Past, the Present, and the Future

Wesley saw the house not ten meters away. It had been two years by his own  
reckoning since he'd last been there, and he was pleasantly surprised to see that  
he'd reached it so easily.  
The cottage was a replica of the original family home, according to Nana  
anyway. The thick stone walls were made to hold in the warmth of the  
fireplace, while the interior furnace, tastefully hidden between the walls, made  
sure that the coziness was more than just ambience. The Howards were proud  
of their history, but none of them were fools.

He keyed the electronic lock and stepped into the gloom. The caretaker had  
kept it clean for them, chasing away the cobwebs, making sure the pipes didn't  
freeze and generally keeping the roof from falling in, but he had no reason to  
keep the lights on when the family was not expected.

Fortunately, he had also been told that Wesley had a habit of just showing up  
places when he was not expected and could he possibly keep some  
non-perishables in the pantry and make sure that the new replicator was  
functioning right and by the way could he also not mention to anyone how the  
older son tends to appear out of nowhere even when there may not have been a  
ship in orbit for weeks and how he often arrives in the middle of the day though  
nobody ever actually sees him come thanks ever so much and here's that bonus,  
by the way ...

The caretaker was a nice gentleman by the name of Tom Norris, who was quite  
intelligent but had very little of the fanciful speculator about him, a great asset  
in a man with twin daughters ready to go away to school. If put to the question  
as to why he watched the house, he would laugh and say something about doing  
a favor for an old friend, or sometimes about getting paid to make sure a house  
didn't get up and run away. What he wouldn't say, even to his wife, who had  
also known a young woman named Beverly Howard once upon a blue moon,  
was that he felt particularly unnerved by Bev's kids. The younger tended to  
look at people with the same scrutiny his own children, and Tom himself, had  
once scrutinized the slugs on the tomato plants. The older ... Anyone who  
tended to appear literally out of nowhere, sometimes looking much older than  
he should or younger than he had a right to be, who could leave just as  
mysteriously with a note of thanks and no footprints on the muddiest days, well,  
Tom just as soon preferred to keep someone like that happy. Were he a very  
imaginative man, he might have contemplated cloaked vessels and transporters,  
possibly espionage or even smuggling of illegal goods. Fortunately for  
everyone, he did not think about such things, just as long as Wesley didn't leave  
too much of a mess and the nice retainer appeared in his account at regular  
intervals. Wes liked Tom Norris.

He found the window and opened the curtains, then went looking for the  
replicator. After he'd eaten something (lunch? dinner? People who thought  
travelling through space made for bad jetlag never tried wading through the  
timestream), he located the comm panel (in the living room on the coffee table  
beside a photo album that had been full for at least a century).

His wanderings through the past were done for now. It was time to live in the  
present.

VVVVV

"Admiral Rossa would like to speak with everyone who calls her, but if she did  
she simply would not have time to do anything else," explained the annoyingly  
cheerful commander at Starfleet Headquarters.

"Could you please just tell her that I called? We need to discuss an offer she  
made some time ago."

"Of course. If you'll tell me what it concerns, I'll pass along the message when  
she gets back."

"Tell her my name. Tell her she can reach me on Caldos. She'll know."  
Before the commander could ask anything else, Wes closed the channel and sat  
back in the chair. Three hours of going through the usual channels simply to  
leave a message for the Commander in Chief, Starfleet, was not his idea of a  
pleasant afternoon. With his current luck, the Admiral wouldn't even  
remember him. Well, he could always call back.

He had wanted to save the next call for last only because he'd wanted to have  
some good news to tell, but then again, he would have time for that later. All  
the time in the universe.

He keyed in the code and hoped that she was off-duty. After what felt like an  
hour, the screen dissolved into a face he'd feared more than once that he would  
never see again.

"Hi stranger," she said, her voice uncertain.

"Hi beautiful. Want to get married?"

Robin pondered this for a moment. "Depends. When?"

"What are you doing tonight?"

"Patrolling the Neutral Zone. We won't be back to your part of the galaxy for a  
few weeks yet." She hesitated. "Are you serious this time? I mean, are you  
going to tell me in a month that the Traveler wants you to go into Ancient  
Andor to interview Telev or something?" They'd done this before, talked both  
virtually and in reality, only for him to go playing in the timestream again. She  
had no reason but his word that this time would be any different.

"Not unless I want to go myself. I'm finished. The Traveler told me that I've  
completed my training with him. For good this time." As to what else the  
Traveler had told him, he could find a way to tell her someday.

"In that case," she said, looking as though she might cry, "let's plan a wedding."

VVVVV

The _Enterprise_ was out on a mapping mission, and wouldn't be back for two  
months. The _Hood_, where a certain Lt. Cmdr. Lefler served as Chief  
Engineer, would be ferrying diplomats back and forth to the neutral planet  
Geneva, where the _Pasteur_ was currently stationed, and looked to be so for as  
long as the peace talks continued. Meanwhile, the _Chekov_ was on a mission  
to the Gamma Quadrant for a reason her captain could not go into, but it was  
scheduled to return in about six weeks and could be pursuaded to detour by  
Geneva for a day or so. Alexander was due for a vacation in about three  
months, and could probably arrange passage to Geneva if his security clearance  
went through in time.

Then there was Geneva itself.

It had been chosen for the peace conference for a very good reason: no  
indigenous intelligent lifeforms, and a location just at the corners of Federation,  
Romulan, and Klingon space. The conference was to finalize a new alliance  
among the Federation, the Klingons, the Cardassians, and the Romulans (The  
Romulans? The last Wes had heard of sector politics, the Romulans were  
quickly losing a war with the Klingons, who were more than prepared to occupy  
the Romulan Empire. He'd have to look into this more when he had a chance).  
The independent races like the Borg and the Ferengi were also invited to come  
and voice their own concerns. Even the Hortas had sent an ambassador.

With the chance for peace so close, the leaders of the four main factions had  
already arrived, with various ambassadors and diplomatic functionaries from all  
interested parties coming and going throughout the somewhat tedious process of  
writing the actual treaty. Security forces from every race imaginable set up nets  
and cameras and as often as not ended up spying on one another just as much as  
on the attendees at the conference. It was a merry mess, full of pomp and  
circumstance and blustering and quiet rooms filled with ambassadors who had  
been working together so long they were closer friends with their declared  
enemies than with members of their own species.

In the middle of it all, his stepfather was acting as the Head Ambassador for the  
Federation, since he had made a favorable impression on all the above leaders  
in his days as a starship captain. The Klingons remained indebted to him for  
helping them through internal problems, while even the Cardassians would  
allow him to help them towards agreement. Add to this his half-Klingon,  
half-Romulan aide, who was fluent in twelve languages and growing, and was  
already being groomed for an ambassadorship of her own although she was a  
year younger than Wes. This made the ambassador's often maddening job  
somewhat easier.

Jean-Luc had once described the job of mediating disputes among the Big Four  
as akin to walking through a cow pasture with a shovel, trying to get the exact  
same amount of manure on every square centimeter of ground without stepping  
in it, all the while balancing a shuttlepod and a cat on his head and trying his  
best to avoid the ambassador from Betazed.

This was not a description he mentioned to anyone who would carry it back to  
said ambassador, fortunately.

What the peace treaty meant for Robin and Wesley was that everyone would  
meet in orbit around Geneva in three months. They would have a small  
ceremony in the Ten-Forward lounge of the _Pasteur_, with the wedding party  
consisting of her parents, his mother and step-father, his brother, and a very  
small guest list of friends who were like family. For no reason he could justify  
to himself, Wes added three more invitations and silently hoped.

It would be a short, intimate gathering with Robin in her dress uniform, Wesley  
in an appropriate suit, both conducted through it all by his mother. They could  
have the wedding, have the reception, and then everyone could hop aboard their  
own ships or beam down to the planet, as the case might be. It was a good plan.

VVVVV

The plan changed. Someone in the Ferengi delegation overheard Ambassador  
Picard conversing with Captain Picard via subspace concerning their son's  
upcoming wedding. To be precise, the aide to the Nagus was eavesdropping,  
hoping to discover some profitable information, but the result was the same.  
When the Nagus heard about the wedding, he declared that it would be a perfect  
opportunity to get in good with the ambassador and make a show of  
respectability among the other diplomats there. Considering the Nagus'  
current level of respectability in the eyes of his fellow politicians, any change  
would be an increase. When he told Ambassador Picard of his intention to  
attend the wedding, in the presence of several representatives of various parties,  
there was no way for Picard to politely tell the Nagus that he wasn't invited.

The Head of the Klingon High Council soon after took Picard aside, and asked  
him very politely, at least in consideration of the stereotypical image of the  
Klingon who would just as soon eat a book as read it, as to why the Grand  
Nagus had been invited to his son's wedding and not the Klingon delegation.  
Had Picard forgotten the many years between them? No, Picard had not  
forgotten; he simply had not yet had time to send out the  
invitations. He would, however, be certain to hand-deliver the invitations for  
the Klingon delegation just as soon as they were properly ready and would the  
Emperor be coming as well?

According to twentieth-century astronomers, stars formed when pockets of  
hydrogen gathered together to form larger pockets. Gradually, gravitational  
forces would pull in still more hydrogen until the mass and density of the gas  
caused enough heat for the gathering to combust.

A similar process took place with the guest list for the wedding.

By the time everyone's ego had been satisfied, the guest list, which had formerly  
been given a top limit of twenty, now numbered slightly under five hundred,  
which included the Leader of the Klingon High Council, the Emperor of the  
Klingon Empire, the Praetor of Romulus, the Proconsul of the Romulan Senate,  
the Head of the Obsidian Order on Cardassia, the Commander in Chief of the  
Cardassian military forces, the President of the United Federation of Planets, the  
Commander in Chief of Starfleet one Admiral Connaught Rossa, the Grand  
Nagus of the Ferengi Alliance, Hugh the acting head of the Freed Borg  
Collective, assorted ambassadors from every planet, everyone's husbands and/or  
wives, about two dozen offspring, one larva, and Boothby, who had been talked  
into it only because Ambassador Picard had personally promised him a tour of  
the famous Geneva Hanging Gardens. It looked to be the social event of the  
season.

The original group who had been invited talked quietly amongst themselves  
about just sending presents and then leaving the quadrant at Warp 13.

The original bride who had been planning the wedding came close to calling the  
whole thing off when she heard the news from her soon-to-be-stepfather-in-law,  
with the words that had she wanted a circus, she would have married a clown.

Ambassador Picard, who had known his wife for half his life and still had  
problems understanding her and thus knew very well that he had no hope of  
explaining things to Robin, contacted his stepson, who was still on Caldos  
waiting for Admiral Rossa's return message, and told him what had occurred.

Wes contaced Robin, and they had a long discussion about life and love and  
why they should have gotten eloped ten years before and forgotten this mess.  
However, with his parents there, hers on the way, and Guinan graciously  
agreeing to cater everything no matter where the bloody thing was held, they  
really had to go through with it.

Very shortly after this, Wesley received a message from Admiral Rossa, who  
had finally gotten his original message and who of course could never have  
forgotten him and how would he like the title of Starfleet Temporal  
Ambassador at Large with a tidy income attached so long as he would agree that  
any interesting historical tidbits he might learn or pick up in his travels would  
be turned over to the proper authorities for study and of course he realized that  
officially Starfleet and the Federation had not even heard of Travelers since they  
had discovered the previous year that Tau Alpha C was uninhabited other than  
by protobacterial lifeforms so could he possibly keep his abilities quiet and by  
the way this was the Admiral's private office number he could feel free to use it  
oh he should know that the admiral's personal secretary had been reassigned so  
good to hear from him and she would see him at the wedding.

It was a long three months.

VVVVV

The day arrived. Robin had been sequestered in the guest quarters assigned her  
since the morning. She had spent the day with Belle, Lal, and a woman she'd  
known from her academy days whose name Wes was still incapable of  
pronouncing. The women had kicked the men out the previous evening right  
after the rehearsal dinner, then spent the rest of the night talking about them.  
Captains Riker and Worf immediately implemented Operation Bachelor Party,  
only to discover that the subject of the occasion, who had attended similar  
soirees for them and knew the usual aftermath, had wisely locked himself in his  
own quarters. Fortunately for everyone, there was not a lock in existence that  
had ever kept out Data, and the festivities went on.

This, Wes decided, was why so few husbands could remember their  
anniversaries: they probably couldn't remember much of the wedding, either.

Ambassador Picard had agreed to meet the guests and show them the way to the  
_Pasteur_'s largest room. This was actually all five of the ship's holodecks with  
the walls separating them removed and the whole thing made to resemble the  
Ten-Forward lounge from the late lamented _Enterprise-D_, albeit much larger.  
Captain Picard bowed out of escort duty, claiming that she still had a ship to  
run. The ambassador did convince several of their friends to assist in this  
endeavor, which led to the Grand Nagus of the Ferengi Alliance being escorted  
to the main holodeck of the starship _Pasteur_ by an android starship captain  
and a former Maquis. It was an interesting morning.

Near the end of the beamups, Wes joined Jean-Luc and Belle in transporter  
room four. All of the others were busy with various tasks, he was not allowed  
to see Robin, and frankly, he really didn't want to be alone for fear of  
accidentally Travelling to Ancient Pakistan or somewhere out of sheer  
nervousness.

The Breen delegation beamed up, and with some devotions to the god of  
Protocol from both sides, they were shown the way to the holodeck.

"How many more parties are arriving?" asked Wes when they returned to the  
transporter room. The chief checked the panel.

"This should be the last one. It's the Romulan delegation."

Wes saw Belle's eyes light up with anticipation.

"Do you know the ... " He was cut off by the whine of the transporter. Seven  
forms materialized on the pad. Jean-Luc and Belle stepped forward to greet  
them.

"Praetor, Proconsul," he said. "Thank you so much for joining us today."

Belle spoke almost at the same time: "Welcome to the ship! I was hoping  
you'd come!" She smiled and embraced the Proconsul warmly.

Wes stood back from them, staring.

I give you your past.

His stepfather was saying: "May I present Wesley Crusher, the groom? Wesley,  
this is ... " He let the words pass by him as he shook hands with the Praetor of  
Romulus. She was still wearing red, and her dark hair still had the brilliant  
streaks of white, but not a wrinkle had graced her features.

"Pleased to meet you, Praetor Arkaed." He turned to her husband, a man who  
thankfully looked nothing like Turin, and also greeted him.

Then he faced the Proconsul of the Romulan Senate, flanked by two men whom  
Jean-Luc had just identified as her consorts, one built large and stocky, one  
slimmer and closer to the Romulan ideal, and between them, the woman who  
had changed the fate of the Romulan Empire.

"Congratulations, Wesley," she said in that softly accented voice. "Marriage is  
one of the grandest journeys anyone can take." She smiled happily at her  
husbands.

"Thank you, Proconsul," he managed to get out. There was so much more that  
he wanted to ask, to say, but the words escaped him. He repeated, simply,  
"Thank you."

Trehan laughed. "Wedding day jitters. Gets every man I've known."

Josolar looked over at him. "So that's why you walked into the doorframe the  
day of our wedding." He explained to Belle: "He was unconscious for over an  
hour. I was convinced he'd given himself a concussion." She smiled, as Trehan  
pretended to be shocked. Kriana grabbed a hand from each.

"That's enough, children." She sent a silent plea to Arkaed.

"Ambassador, perhaps you could show us where to go." Everyone else already  
transported, the whole party went, with Wesley trailing along behind, drinking  
in their presence.

"How is little Valkrys?" asked Kriana.

"She's decided that if walking is good, climbing is better," said Belle. "Right  
now, she's in Robin's quarters. She may be flower girl, but not if she tries to eat  
the freesias again."

They made small talk for a few minutes, and then they were at the holodeck  
and there was no more time. Wes tried desperately to think of something to say  
to let them know, but his mind was blank.

The Praetor thanked them for the escort, prepared to move inside and what if  
he couldn't find them again after the reception?

"Proconsul?"

"Yes?"

"At the reception, we're having Beluga caviar. I think you'll like it." The others  
stared at him.

"Ba'el ... " started Kriana.

"Ummm ... Fish eggs, I believe."

"Ah." She said nothing more, but a smile graced her lips as she nodded to them  
and went inside.

"What was that about?" asked Jean-Luc uncertainly, visions of interstellar  
conflicts no doubt dancing in his head.

"The past," said Wes, and smiled. "We should finish getting ready."

VVVVV

He stood in front of the mirror, checking his suit for about the billionth time. It  
was a simple suit: dark pants and jacket, with a white shirt. The matching tie  
had been ritually sacrificed the night before in a mysterious ceremony involving  
a pair of scissors, a bottle of champagne, three poker chips, cat fur  
(unintentional), a book of matches and some kiwifruits. He brushed an  
imaginary bit of lint from his shoulder.

"Wesley," said Jean-Luc, patiently standing behind him, trying somewhat  
unsuccessfully to make Jack keep his clothes on. "You look fine. Stop  
worrying. That's an order."

"Too bad I'm not Starfleet, isn't it?" They shared a smile, and he felt better.  
Jack looked from his father to his brother, then went back to figuring out the  
best way to untie his  
uncomfortable shoes.

Jack was dressed in a smaller version of Wesley's own suit. As ringbearer, he  
had to look his best.

His father looked handsome in an outfit reminiscent of his old dress uniform:  
red, long, with gold braiding around the collar. His legs were in tight black  
leggings, to the delight of his wife who swore to anyone who would listen that  
he had the best legs in the Federation.

"Where's Mom? I was sure she'd find an excuse to come in here and cry."

Jean-Luc snorted. "Hardly. Last I saw her, she was heading towards Robin's  
quarters to counteract Eliza's influence again."

"Uh oh."

"My thoughts exactly."

Eliza was his soon-to-be-mother-in-law. Eliza was a plasma specialist, like  
Eliza's much quieter husband Chester. Eliza was a very interesting woman.  
Eliza didn't like Beverly Picard. Eliza thought that children should only be  
conceived in wedlock, and when Eliza first met the somewhat-pregnant woman  
who was to become Eliza's daughter's mother-in-law, the woman was still  
called Doctor Beverly Crusher and had no intention of marrying the father of  
her child until her other child was there. Eliza didn't like that. Eliza thought  
that Eliza's daughter had become attached to a family with no morals  
whatsoever. Eliza had forbidden Eliza's daughter to see Wesley ever again.  
Eliza's daughter had told Eliza exactly where Eliza could go.

They had since made up, fortunately.

There was a chime.

"Come," said Wes, and his mother entered. He glanced knowingly at Jean-Luc.

Before she could say anything, Wes asked, "So is there anything left of Eliza, or  
should we leave the sector before the authorities arrive?"

"Wesley, really! I wouldn't hurt my favorite in-law, now would I?"

"I didn't ask you about Robin. I asked about Eliza." She laughed, then bent  
down to Jack.

"Now what do you think you're doing, young man?"

"I hate this suit, Mommy. It itches!"

His father bent down, and said in a conspiratorial voice, "Trust me, Jacky. It  
gets worse as you get older."

Beverly straightened, not quite as quickly as she once had. She was in dress  
uniform: cranberry red and form-fitting, it looked a bit like her husband's outfit.  
Her legs were also clad in tight black, which his stepfather enjoyed for more  
than one reason. First, she looked fantastic (his mother and her husband still  
had very healthy libidos, something which made Wes more than a little  
uncomfortable), and second, if he had to wear them, she had to wear them.

"Wesley," she began.

The door chimed again.

"Come," they said in unison.

The door opened to admit an older couple, both probably well past ninety, he  
with salt-and-pepper hair and deep brown eyes, she with pure white hair drawn  
back, and eyes the green of the sea. A younger woman was with them, her  
delicately tapered ears betraying her half-Vulcan ancestry (so he had always  
been told, anyway), with long, straight blonde hair. His mother paled as her  
other in- laws stepped uncertainly into the room.

Jack, never one to be at a loss for words, asked them "Who are you?" For a  
fleeting moment, Wes thought of Arrhat as his mind tried to assimilate the  
appearance of people he had not seen since he was younger than his brother.

"Jacky, these are my great-grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Crusher, and this is my  
great-aunt Rachel."

"Hello, Wesley," the older woman said, her voice just on the edge of quivering.

"We got the invitation, and thought that now would be a good time to say hello  
again," said the man. He and his wife both looked extremely ill at ease, while  
Aunt Rachel remained impassive.

Beverly, still in minor shock, said, "It's always a good time."

Time. Wes said quickly: "Could I talk to the two of you alone? We only have  
a few minutes left."

Jean-Luc picked up Jack. His mother squeezed his hand briefly, then they left  
with Aunt Rachel, no doubt still wondering just what was going on. Wesley, on  
the other hand, was beginning to realize one of the secrets of the universe.

For the first time in twenty-five years, he faced his father's grandparents. "You  
knew. You knew to come today."

She spoke. "Fifteen years. And you said you hadn't been married yet. Today  
seemed like the first day that wouldn't destroy everything."

Your existence depends upon a paradox.

You are here to correct the paradox, but first you need to set it into motion.

You will find once more that which you had thought lost forever.

Hesitantly, he reached out and took her hand, touched his arm. "Welcome  
home, Lady. We've missed you so very very much."

VVVVV

Had Ten-Forward, real or imagined, ever looked so alive with faces and  
flowers? Had there ever been such music? His heart soared inside him as Jack  
walked towards them with a pillow carrying two golden circles.

He waited, watching Robin walk down the aisle hand-in-hand with her father  
and mother. She reached him, kissed her parents, and then took his hands. His  
mother smiled gently at them all, then turned her eyes to the book she carried.

"We gather here today ... " Her words floated over and through him.

"Wesley Richard Crusher, do you ... " He was certain that he answered the  
appropriate "I do," but he couldn't remember it. All he could see was Robin's  
bright face looking into his soul and smiling at what she found there.

I give you your present.

Suddenly, without his being aware of it, his mother had reached the part where  
she said, "By the power invested in me ..." He stopped time.

Wesley looked around him. His mother stood before them, ready to bless the  
union with words made sacred centuries before. His stepfather stood beside  
him, holding Jacky's shoulder to keep him still, acting as best man just as he had  
stood for Jack, and as Wesley had stood for him in his wedding. The circles  
continued to close.

Robin's friend of the unpronounceable name, Chester and Eliza were to the  
other side of Robin, Eliza attempting to smile at his mother. He ignored her.

In the audience, he saw faces he had known and loved for the better part of  
forever beaming good will back to him: Geordi and Laren, Deanna and Will,  
Worf and Ba'el, Guinan, Data, Saavik, Reg, Miles, Keiko, Tom, Jaxa ... These  
were his universe. He saw their children, ranging in ages from the twins, who  
were almost as old as Jack, to Valkrys, who'd just turned one and had developed  
a taste for freesias, to Lal who was both older than them all and younger than  
the baby. There was no sign of Q or Amanda. It was just as well. He recalled  
quite clearly what they had done at his mother's wedding.

Closer to the middle, he could just make out where his three favorite Romulans  
watched unknowing. He wondered how life had turned out for them, how many  
children they had, if they ever thought about him, or their group's mad little  
sister. He would find a way to ask, somehow.

At the rear of the room, behind the diplomats and the professional  
manure-spreaders, he could see another set of three. The story he had always  
been told was that Aunt Rachel's father had been a Vulcan trader far from home  
at the wrong time, that he chose to remain quietly anonymous, that her mother  
had married her stepfather a week before her birth. As to the truth, well,  
Guinan had once said that truth was in the eye of the beholder. He beheld them  
motionless, and understood.

Then, he saw another pair who were not frozen. The Traveler sat in his Human  
form, his own older self, and the thought warmed him, with a beautiful young  
woman beside him. It was, of course, Arrhat in her Human form, with her  
sky-blue eyes that still seemed so familiar ...

I give you your future.

They both nodded at him.

He started time again.

" ... by Starfleet Command, I now pronounce you husband and wife."

Then, the only thing left for him to do was to kiss the bride.

So he did just that.

VVVVV  
The End


End file.
